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AFFINITIES 

AND OTHER STORIES 
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 


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AFFINITIES 

AND OTHER STORIES 


By MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 


Author of 

*'Bah, a Sub-Deb/* '*Tish” Poor Wise Man” etc. 



A. L. BURT COMPANY 
Publishers New York 

Published by arranp'ement with George H. Doran Company 





Copyrighti 1920 ^ 

By George H. Doran Comfony 


Copyright, 1909, 1913, 19H, 1915, by the Curtis Publishing 
Company 


Printed in the United States of America 


CONTENTS 


I 

PAGE 

Affinities «... 9 

II 

The Family Friend ......... 55 

in 

Clara’s Litte Escapade ........ 103 

IV 

The Borrowed House 161 

V 

Sauce for the Gander .••••••. 237 










AFFINITIES 


/ 


t 


I 


J 


AFFINITIES 

AND OTHER STORIES 


AFFINITIES 

I 

S OMEBODY ought to know the truth about the 
Devil’s Island affair and I am going to tell it. 
The truth is generally either better or worse than the 
stories that get about. In this case it is somewhat 
better, though I am not proud of it. 

It started with a discussion about married wom- 
en having men friends. I said I thought it was 
a positive duty — it kept them up to the mark with 
their clothes and gave a sort of snap to things, with- 
out doing any harm. There were six of us on the 
terrace at the Country Club at the time and we all 
felt the same way — that it was fun to have some- 
body that everybody expected to put by one at 
dinners, and to sit out dances with and like the 
way one did one’s hair, and to say nice things. 

'"And to slip out on the links for a moonlight 
chat with you,” said Annette, who is rather given 
9 


10 


AFFINITIES 


to those little pastimes, the most harmless in the 
world. 

We were all awfully bored that Sunday after- 
noon. Most of the men were golfing; and when 
you meet the same people all the time — day after 
day, dinner after dinner, dance after dance — any- 
thing new is welcome. Really the only variety we 
had was a new drink now and then. Some one 
would come home from his vacation with a brand- 
new idea in beverages and order one all round, and 
it was a real sensation. 

That was all we had had all summer for excite- 
ment, except the time Willie Anderson kissed Sy- 
billa — she was his wife — on a wager. They had 
been rather cool to each other for a month or so. 

We would sit on the terrace and the conversation 
would be about like this: 

“There’s the Jacksons’ car.” 

“Why on earth does Ida Jackson wear green*?” 

“Hello, Ida! When d’you get back?” 

“Yesterday. Bully time!” 

Just in time to save us from utter boredom some- 
body would yawn and remark : 

“Here comes the Henderson car.” 

“Jane Henderson’s put on weight. She’s as big 
as a house! Hello, Jane!” 

“Hello, everybody! My goodness! Why did 
I come back? Isn’t it hot?” 


AFFINITIES 


11 

More excitement for a minute and then more 
yawns. It was Ferd Jackson who suggested the af- 
finity party. He had heard about what I had said 
on the terrace, and he came to me while Day was 
playing on the links. Day is my husband. 

“Had a nice afternoon he asked. 

“Only fair. Day’s been underfoot most of the 
time. Why*?” 

“How’d you like a picnic*?” 

“I would not!” I said decisively. “I hate cold 
food and motoring in a procession until you choke 
with dust — and Day getting jealous and disagree- 
able and wanting to get home early.” 

“Poor little girl!” said Ferd, and patted my 
hand in a friendly way. 

Ferd was a good scout always; we got along 
together pretty well and sat together at dinners 
whenever we could. He never made love to me 
or anything like that, but he understood me thor- 
oughly, which Day never took the trouble to do. 
It is absurd, now that it’s all over, to have the others 
saying he was my affinity or anything of the sort. 
I never cared for him. 

“I didn’t mean the usual sort of picnic,” Ferd 
said. “How has it got its pretty hair fixed to-day*? 
Rather nice, lady-love; but why do you hide your 
pretty ears?” 

Lady-love was only a nickname. 


AFFINITIES 


12 

“So I won’t be able to hear Day bragging about 
his golf score. What sort of a picnic*?” 

“It’s a peach of an idea!” Ferd said. “It came 
to me out of a clear sky. Every picnic we’ve ever 
had has been a failure — because why*? Because they 
were husband-and-wife picnics. There’s no trouble 
about a picnic where nobody’s married, is there*?” 

“Humph! What’s the peach of an idea? To 
get divorces?” 

“Certainly not! Have husbands and wives — 
only somebody else’s husband or somebody else’s 
wife. You and I — do you see? — and Annette and 
Tom; Jane Henderson and Emerson Riley; Cath- 
erine Fredericks and that fellow who’s visiting the 
Moores. How about it?” 

“Day would have a convulsion, Ferd.” 

“Good gracious, Fanny!” he said. “Haven’t you 
any imagination? What has Day got to do with 
it? You wouldn’t tell him, of course!” 

Well, that was different. I was rather scared 
when I got to thinking of it, but it sounded amusing 
and different. One way and another I see such a 
lot of Day. He’s always around unless there’s a 
golf tournament somewhere else. 

“It’s moonlight,” Ferd said. “The only thing, 
of course, is to get off. I can stay over at the club 
or go on a motor trip. It’s easy enough for the 


AFFINITIES 


13 

fellows; but the girls will have to work out sc«ne- 
thing.’' 

So we sat and thought. Day came in from the 
links just then and stopped by my chair. 

‘‘Great afternoon!” he said, mopping his face. 
“Y’ought to hear what I did to Robson, Fan — I 
drove off my watch and never touched it. Then he 
tried it with his. Couldn’t even find the case!” 

“Go away. Day,” I said. “Pm thinking.” 

“Ferd doesn’t seem to interfere with your think- 
ing.” 

“He’s negative and doesn’t count,” I explained. 
“You’re positive.” 

That put him in a good humour again and he 
went off for a shower. I turned to Ferd. 

“I believe I’ve got it,” I said — “I’ll have a fight 
with Day the morning of the picnic and I’ll not be 
there when he gets home. I’ve done it before. 
Then, when I do go home, he’ll be so glad to see 
me he’ll not ask any questions. He’ll think I’ve 
been off sulking.” 

“Good girl!” said Ferd. 

“Only you must get home by ten o’clock — that’s 
positive. By eleven he’d be telephoning the police.” 

“Sure I will ! We’ll all have to get home at rea- 
sonable hours.” 

“And — I’m a wretch, Ferd. He’s so fond of 
me!” 


14 


AFFINITIES 


‘‘That’s no particular virtue in him. Pm fond 
of you — and that’s mild, Fan; but what’s a virtue 
in Day is a weakness in me, I dare say.” 

“It’s an indiscretion,” I said, and got up. 
Enough is a sufficiency, as somebody said one day, 
and I did not allow even Ferd to go too far. 

Annette and Jane and Catherine were all crazy 
about it. Annette was the luckiest, because Charles 
was going for a fishing trip, and her time was her 
own. And Ferd’s idea turned out to be perfectly 
bully when the eight of us got together that even- 
ing and talked it over while the husbands were shoot- 
ing crap in the grill room. 

“There’s an island up the river,” he explained, 
“where the men from our mill have been camp- 
ing; and, though the tents are down, they built 
a wooden pavilion at the edge of the water for a 
dining hall — and, of course, that’s still there. We 
can leave town at, say, four o’clock and motor up 
there — you and Tom, Annette and ” 

“I’ve been thinking it over, Ferd,” I put in, “and 
I won’t motor. If the car goes into a ditch or 
turns over you always get in the papers and there’s 
talk. Isn’t there a street car*?” 

“There’s a street car; but, for heaven’s sake, 
Fanny ” 

“Street car it is,” I said with decision. “With a 
street car we’ll know we’re going to get back to 


AFFINITIES 


15 

town. It won’t be sitting on its tail lamp in a 
gully; and we won’t be hiding the license plates un- 
der a stone and walking home, either.” 

There was a lot of demur and at first Annette said 
she wouldn’t go that way; but she came round at 
last. 

‘‘I’ll send a basket up late in the afternoon,” 
Ferd said, “with something to eat in it. And you 
girls had better put on sensible things and cut out 
the high heels and fancy clothes. If you are going 
in a street car you’d better be inconspicuous.” 

That was the way we arranged it finally — the 
men to take one car and the girls another and meet 
opposite the island on the river bank. We should 
have to row across and Ferd was to arrange about 
boats. We set Thursday as the day. 

Some sort of premonition made me nervous — 
and I was sorry about Day too; for though the pic- 
nic was only a lark and no harm at all, of course 
he would have been furious had he known. And 
he was very nice to me all the week. He sent flow- 
ers home twice and on Wednesday he said I might 
have a new runabout. That made it rather difficult 
to quarrel with him Thursday, as I had arranged. 

I lay awake half the night trying to think of 
something to quarrel about. I could not find any- 
thing that really answered until nearly dawn, when 
I decided to give him some bills I had been holding 


16 


AFFINITIES 


back. I fell asleep like a child then and did not 1 
waken until eleven o’clock. There was a box of 
roses by the bed and a note in Day’s writing. 

‘‘Honey lamb !” he wrote : “Inclosed is a telegram 
from Waite calling me to Newburyport to the tour- I 
namcnt. Fll hardly get back before to-morrow I 
night. I came to tell you, but you looked so beau- | 
tiful and so sound asleep I did not have the heart i 
to waken you. Be a good girl ! Day.” I 

Somehow the note startled me. Could he have 
had any suspicion I felt queer and uneasy all the 
time I was dressing; but after I had had a cup of 
tea I felt better. There is nothing underhanded 
about Day. He has no reserves. And if he had 
learned about the picnic he would have been bleating 
all over the place. 

The weather was splendid — a late summer day, 
not too warm, with a September haze over every- 
thing. We met at the hairdresser’s and Jane Hen- 
derson was frightfully nervous. i 

“Of course I’m game,” she said, while the man 
pinned on her net; “but my hands are like ice.” 

Catherine, however, was fairly radiant. 

“There’s a sort of thrill about doing something 
clandestine,” she observed, “that isn’t like anything 


AFFINITIES 


17 

else in the world. I feel like eloping with Mr. Lee. 
You’ll all be mad about him. He’s the nicest 
thing!” 

Mr. Lee was the Moores’ guest. 

I had got into the spirit of the thing by that time 
and I drew a long breath. Day was safely out of 
the way, the weather was fine, and I had my hair 
over my ears the way Ferd liked it. 

II 

Everything went wonderfully — up to a certain 
point. Have you ever known it to fail? Every- 
thing swims along and all is lovely — and the thing, 
whatever it may be, is being so successful that it 
is almost a culmination; and then suddenly, out 
of a clear sky, there is a slip-up somewhere and you 
want to crawl off into a comer and die. 

Ferd had got there early and had a boat ready, 
all scrubbed out and lined with old carpets. He was 
just as excited as any of us. 

“The trouble with us,” he said, as we rowed over 
to the island, “is that we are all in a rut. We do 
the same things over and over, at the same places, 
with the same people. The hoi polloi never make 
that mistake and they get a lot more out of life. 
Every now and then the puddlers from the mill, 
come over here and have a great time.” 


AFFINITIES 


18 

There were two islands, one just above the other, 
with about a hundred feet of water between them. 
The upper island was much the nicer and it was 
there that Ferd had planned the party. 

He does things awfully well, really. He had had a 
decorator out there early in the day and the pavil- 
ion was fixed up with plants and vines which 
looked as if they grew on it. He had the table 
fixed too, with a mound of roses and the most in- 
teresting place cards. Mine had a little jewelled 
dagger thrust through it, and the card said : 

That’s as much as to say^ they are fools that marry. 

He said the quotation was from Shakespeare and 
the dagger was for Day. 

Annette’s card said: 

She was married,^ charming,, chaste,, and 
twenty ‘three,, 

which delighted Annette, she being more than twen- 
ty-three. 

Ferd’s own card said: 

Another woman now and then 
Is relished by the best of men, 

I have forgotten the others. The dagger was a 
pin, and each card had something pretty fastened 
to it. 


AFFINITIES 


19 


We sat and gossiped while we waited for the 
others and then we wandered round. The island 
was not very pretty — flat and weedy mostly, with 
a good many cans the campers had left, and a 
muddy shore where a broken dock, consisting of 
two planks on poles, was the boat landing. But it 
was only later that I hated it, really. That after- 
noon we said it was idyllic, and the very place for 
a picnic. 

The other men arrived soon after, and it was 
really barrels of fun. We made a rule first. No 
one was to mention an absent husband or wife; 
and the person who did had to tell a story or sing 
a song as a forfeit. I was more than proud of Ferd. 
He had even had a phonograph sent up, with a lot 
of new music. We danced the rest of the after- 
noon and the Lee man danced like an angel. I 
never had a better time. Jane voiced my feelings 
perfectly. 

‘It’s not that I’m tired of Bill,” she said. “I 
dote on him, of course; but it is a relief, once in a 
while, not to have a husband in the offlng, isn’t it? 
And the most carping critic could not object to 
anything we are doing. That’s the best of all.” 

The dinner was really wonderful — trust Ferd for 
that too. We were almost hilarious. Between 
courses we got up and changed our own plates, and 
we danced to the side table and back again. Once 


20 AFFINITIES 

we had an alarm, however. An excursion boat came 
up the river and swung in close tc the pavilion. 
We had not noticed it until it was quite near and 
there was no time to run; so we all sat down on the 
floor inside the railing, which was covered with 
canvas, and had our salad there. 

By the time dinner was over it was almost dark; 
and we took a bottle of champagne down to the 
dock and drank it there, sitting on the boards, with 
our feet hanging. Ferd had been growing sentimen- ’ 
tal for the last hour or two and I had had to keep 
him down. He sat beside me on the boards and kept 
talking about how he envied Day, and that Ida 
was a good wife and better than he deserved; but 
no one had ever got into him the way I had. 

“I’m not trying to flatter you, Fanny,” he said. 
“I’ve always been honest with you. But there’s a 
woman for every man, and you’re my woman.” 

He had come rather close and, anyhow, he was 
getting on my nerves; so I gave him just the least 
little bit of a push and he fell right back into the 
water. I was never so astonished in my life. 

The way Jane Henderson told it later was crim- 
inally false. I did not push him with all my 
strength and he had not tried to kiss me. Nobody 
had had too much to drink. It was a perfectly 
proper party, and my own mother could not have 
found a single thing to criticise. 


AFFINITIES 


21 


Well, Ferd was wet through and not very agree- 
able. He said, however, that he had merely over- 
balanced, and that he would dry out somehow. The 
only thing was that he had to get back home and 
he felt he was not looking his best. 

The moon came up and was perfectly lovely; but 
about the time we had settled down to singing soft 
little songs and the Lee man was saying what a 
good lot of sports we were, and that he was going 
to take the idea back home, a lot of puddlers and 
their wives rowed out from the shore and started 
toward our island. Ferd was awfully annoyed. He 
stood up and shouted at them. 

“You can’t come here!” he called. “This place 
is taken. Go to the other island.” 

“Go to the devil!” one of the puddlers bellowed 
from the boat; nevertheless they turned the boat’s 
nose round and went to the other island. We could 
hear them yelling and laughing there, and singing 
in the ccmmonest fashion. It ruined the moonlight 
for us. From that time the bloom was off, as one 
may say, and things went from bad to worse. 

The last car went at ten o’clock, and at half-past 
nine we commenced to pack up. Annette insisted 
on taking the roses; and there was the phonograph 
and th^club’s silver and dishes, and almost a boat- 
load of stuff. We could not all get in, of course^ 


AFFINITIES 


22 

so Ferd and Emerson Riley agreed to wait; but 
just as I got into the boat I dropped my gold bag 
overboard. 

I would not go without the bag. It was set with 
diamonds and I did not know when I should get 
another. I just got out of the boat and refused to 
stir until it had been fished out. 

There was a great deal of excitement. The last 
car had come and was waiting on the bank for its 
return trip, and every one was anxious to get off. 
Ferd, who was wet anyway, waded in, but he could 
not locate it immediately, and Jane grew hysterical. 

'‘Come on and leave it. Fan!” she begged. 
“What’s a bag compared with one’s reputation 
That car’s moving now !” 

“Go on !” I said coldly. “I shall stay here until 
Ferd finds it. Go on, all of you! You can send a 
man back with the boat, I dare say.” 

They did it ! I never was more astounded in my 
life; but they all piled in except Ferd and me, and 
made for the shore as fast as they could. They said 
it was all well enough for me, with Day out of 
town ; but the rest of them never had any luck and 
they had to get that car. 

“They’re terribly nervous, all at once!” I said. 
“If that car goes without me, Ferd, I shall jump 
into the river!” 


AFFINITIES 


23 


It was moonlight, but not very bright. I sat on 
the dock and Ferd fished for the gold bag. He 
brought up an empty bottle, two tin cans and an 
old shoe. 

“Look here. Fan,” he said finally, “I’ll buy you 
a new bag. I’ll do anything — only let's get out of 
this.” 

“Try once more.” 

“I’ll get neuralgia,” he said. “I have to be 
awfully careful, Fanny. Ida- has to watch me like a 
hawk." 

“I should imagine so,” I replied coldly. 

“I mean about the neuralgia.” 

“Humph! Day never has anything the matter 
with him — that’s one thing. Try again, Ferd.” 

He stooped again, and this time he got it. He 
straightened up with it in his hand. The car was 
still on the bank and a boat was putting out from 
the shore. All seemed to be well. 

“They’ll bribe the motorman to wait,” said Ferd. 
“I told Riley to. So you see, little girl, everything’s 
all right. Here’s the bag and there’s the boat. Do 
you like me a little bit again 

I felt rather queer, alone there on the island with 
him; and the only thing that occurred to me was 
to keep him down. 

“I’ll like you well enough when we get back to 
civilization,” I said shortly. 


24 


AFFINITIES 


“You’re not like yourself, Fanny. You aren’t a 
bit kind to me.” 

“Being nice to you with everybody round is one 
thing. This is another. I’m scared, Ferd.” 

“Not of me!” he said, getting hold of one of my 
hands. He looked horrid in the moonlight, with his 
collar in a crease and his coat stuck to him. He 
looked awfully thin, too, and his hair was in strag- 
gles over his face. “Fan, the boat’s coming and I 
never see you alone. Do say you care a little bit !” 

Well, I had to play the game. I am not a quitter. 
I had let him get up the party and spend a lot of 
money, and I had pretended for months to be inter- 
ested in him. What was I to do? You. may say 
what you like — a lot of married women get into 
things they never meant to simply because they are 
kind-hearted and hate to be called quitters. 

“Fve always cared a little,” I said, trying not 
to look at him. “Ferd, you’re dripping! Don’t 
touch me!” 

“Lady-love!” cried Ferd, very close to my ear; 
and then: “Good gracious, Fan! Where’s the 
boat?” 

It had absolutely disappeared! Ferd stood up 
on the shaky dock and peered over the water. 

“He’s gone to the other island,” he said after a 
moment. “They’ll tell him he’s wrong, but — time’s 
passing!” 


AFFINITIES 


25 


He did not start the lady-love business again, and 
we sat side by side on the dock, with the river, damp 
and smelly, underfoot. It was very silent, save 
for the far-away yells of the puddlers on the next 
island and the drip-drip from Ferd’s trouser-ends 
to the water below. 

Somehow the snap was gone out of the whole 
thing. I hated it, being alone with him there, and 
his looking so mussy, and my vanity case soaking 
from the river. I hated the puddlers’ picnic; there 
was nothing I didn’t hate. And the boatman did 
not come. Even Ferd began to get anxious. 

“The infernal fool!” he said. “He’s probably 

joined the picnic, and Hello, there!” he called, 

with his hands to his mouth. 

I think they heard us on the bank, for we could 
hear the trolley bell very faintly. And, immediate- 
ly after, the car moved off! I had the most awful 
feeling. We sat on the boards watching it getting 
smaller and smaller down the river, and neither of 
us said anything. It had been our one tie, as you 
may say, to respectability and home — and it had 
deserted us. After a minute Ferd got up on his feet. 

“It’s the puddlers, after all!” he said. “We’ll 
have to hail them and get them to send that ass of 
a boatman. Wouldn’t you think that Emerson 
Riley would have had sense enough to wait and see 
that we got over safely?” 


26 


AFFINITIES 


I fairly clutched at his arm. 

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” I said. “They’ll 
know you if they’re from your mill, and they’ll 
know I am not Ida ! It will be in the papers !” 

Ferd looked sulky. 

“What am I to do, then^” he demanded. “Swim 
to the bank?” 

“Couldn’t you swim to the other island and steal 
one of their boats?” 

He did not want to. I could see that; but what 
else was there to do? 

“It’s a good way off,” he said. “It won’t help 
things any for me to be drowned, you know.” 

“It would be better than a scandal, wouldn’t it?” 

He threw up his hands. 

“Oh, if that’s the way you feel ” 

“That isn’t half the way I feel!” 

He went off at that in a fury, leaving me alone 
on the little dock in a state of frenzy. I kept think- 
ing of Day’s getting home sooner than he expected 
and finding me gone, and calling up the police; 
and my wandering in about daylight with my slip- 
pers worn through. I made up a story — if the worst 
happened — about having had an attack of loss of 
memory, coming to myself seven miles from town 
and walking in. 

There was no sign of Ferd. The puddlers’ picnic 


AFFINITIES 


27 


was noisier than ever; they had brought a phono- 
graph, too, and were dancing. 

When I had waited for what seemed half the 
night I got frightened about Ferd. He had said it 
was a good way to go; and if he was drowned — 
and Ida really fond of him, and welcome to him so 
far as I was concerned — it was all up with me. 
Day would loathe the very sight of me. I knew 
that. 

The grass looked snaky in the moonlight and I 
felt I was taking my life in my hands; but, some- 
how or other, with my hair pulled down by branches, 
and ankle-deep in mud every now and then, I got 
to the place where the two islands faced each other, 
end to end. There was not a sign of Ferd. 

I just sank down on the ground and hoped for 
death. There was no way out. Jane and the 
others would think we had the boat and could hire 
a machine or something to get to the city, and they 
would not give us another thought. Even if I hailed 
the puddlers and told them, they would never be- 
lieve my story. And, of course, there was poor Ferd 
in the river mud — sure to float in and spoil any story 
I could make up about loss of memory. 

It was when I had reached that point that pande- 
monium broke loose on the other island. I could 
hear shouting — men and women together — and, in 
a pause, the frantic splashing of oars. The next 


28 


AFFINITIES 


moment a boat appeared round the comer of the 
island, with Ferd rowing like mad, and a perfect 
pandemonium from the shore. He had stolen their 
boat and they had found it out. I was almost crazy. 
I waded out to my knees and called to him; and he 
saw me. There was no other boat after him yet, 
but some one was yelling to follow him. 

Ferd was rather steadied by the excitement, I 
think. He reached over and dragged me in with- 
out a word, and the next instant we were pulling 
for the shore in the moonlight, with the entire pud- 
dlers’ picnic on their bank, calling awful things to 
us. 

That was not all, though. One of the men had 
got into their other boat and was coming after us. 
He could row, too. I implored Ferd to hurry — 
hurry. And I kept turning round to see whether he 
was gaining. That was how I discovered why they 
were so wrought up. There were two dozen quart 
bottles of champagne in the stern of that boat ! We 
were carrying off the picnic! I told Ferd. “Throw 
it overboard !"’ he said. “It’ll lighten the boat.” 

So I did, basket after basket; and, whether it 
lightened the boat or not, we drew ahead. Ferd 
rowed like a demon. In the moonlight his face was 
white and set, with the queerest expression. 

We struck the shore with a bump that sent me on 


AFFINITIES 


29 


my knees, but Ferd grabbed my hand and jerked 
me out. 

“Now run — if you ever ran in your life!” he said. 
“Make for that grove over there, and bend over. 
The bushes will hide us.” 

“I can’t,’’ I panted after a minute. “And why 
should I, Ferd? He’s got his old boat by this 
time ” 

“Run !” gasped Ferd. And I ran. 

We crouched down in the grove. My teeth were 
chattering, but I was nothing to Ferd. He was 
pallid. The puddler landed just then. We heard 
him throw his oars into the boat and drag it up on 
the beach, and I knew he was examining the other 
boat and finding that the wine was gone. We could 
hear him breathing hard, and he even made a start 
toward us, beating the bushes with an oar. He was 
in a red fury, muttering to himself in the most hor- 
rible manner. I had been in Ferd’s mill once or 
twice, and I remembered the enormous shoulders the 
men had, and how they simply toyed with steel 
rails; and I was paralysed. A puddler turned Ber- 
serk! 

He gave it up just in time, however, and started 
back for the boat. I could see him moving about — 
a huge creature in white flannels. And he seemed 
to have cut himself on a branch or something, for 
he was tying a handkerchief round his forehead. 


AFFINITIES 


30 


We did not dare to move until he had started back 
and was safely out from shore. Ferd’s voice had 
lost its strained quality and he looked a little less 
like death. We could hear the picnic party calling 
to the man in the boat about the wine, and his call- 
ing back that we had got away with it, but for some 
of them to come over and they could beat the bushes. 
They couldn’t come, of course, until he took the 
boat back. 

“We’ve got to get out of here. Fan,” Ferd said. 
“In ten minutes the whole shooting match will be 
here. Can you run any more?” 

“Not a foot — I’m all in. And I lost a shoe in the 
water at the island.” 

Ferd groaned. 

“They’ll have us up for stealing their champagne,” 
he said. “I suppose you can walk.” 

“I can limp along, I dare say.” I was wet and 
cold, and horribly miserable. “Don’t let me detain 
you. They can’t arrest me for stealing their wine. 
You did that.” 

He turned to* me suddenly. 

“Fan,” he said solemnly, “don’t ask me why, but 
we must get out of here quick. Must ! If you can’t 
walk, roll. Now come on!” 

There were no houses in sight. The trolley line 
ends there, and I think it is a picnic grove. He took 
my hand and dragged me along. I lost my other 


AFFINITIES 


31 


slipper, but he paid no attention when I told him of 
it; and just when I was about to sink down and die 
we reached a road. 

“Now,” said Ferd, “they came in something — 
machines probably — for they’ll have to get back, 
and there are no more cars. Ah, there they are!” 

There were two machines. I gripped Ferd’s arm 
and held him back desperately. 

“The chauffeurs I gasped. 

“We’ll kill ’em, if necessary,” he said between 
clenched teeth. 

We were loping down the road toward the ma- 
chines — Ferd sloshing, rather, with each step; and 
we could hear loud calling from the islands and the 
banging of oars in oarlocks. 

“F-Ferd,” I managed to say, “c-can — ^you — drive 
— a — car*?” 

“Why, you can, can’t you^” 

“I — caa — d-drive — my — own car. I d-don’t — 
know about — any other.” 

“They’re all alike. The principle’s the same.” 

“I don’t know anything about the principles,” I 
said despairingly. “And I won’t touch a strange 
machine.” 

“Oh, very well !” said Ferd sulkily. “We’ll make 
a deuce of a stir — arrested here for stealing a case 
of champagne; but never mind. It’ll blow over.” 

“We can tell the whole story.” 


AFFINITIES 


32 

“We cannot!’’ he said gloomily. “We can’t tell 
on Jane and Annette and Catherine. We’ll have to 
take our medicine, that’s all. We needn’t give our 
own names. That’s one thing.” 

I was perfectly crazed with fright and exhaustion. 
I leaned up against a fence, and I remembered the 
time Lily Slater asked Ollie Haynes to see her off 
to Chicago, her husband being out of town; and 
how Ollie was carried two hundred miles before 
the train would stop to let him off; and how 
Harry never believed the story and was off shoot- 
ing big game at that very minute ; and Lily getting 
gray over her ears as a result, and not even going out 
to lunch with anybody for fear there were detectives 
watching her. 

And, compared with Day, Harry Slater was an 
angel of mildness. 

The boat was almost across by that time and Ferd 
was wringing the ends of his trousers. A sort of 
frenzy seized me. It seemed to me it would be bet- 
ter to be found crushed under a strange car than 
to be arrested for stealing champagne. I started on, 
rather tottery. 

“I’ll try it, Ferd,” I said. “I think we’ll be 
killed; but come on!” 

For once luck was with us. It was a car exactly 
like my own! I almost cried for joy. I leaped 
in and pressed the starter, and the purr of the engine 


AFFINITIES 


SB 


was joyous, absolutely. I let in the clutch and 
the darling slid along without a jerk. We were 
saved! I could drive that car. I snapped the gear 
lever forward into high and the six cylinders leaped 
to our salvation. We were off, with the white road 
ahead; and the puddlers were only beaching their 
boat. Ferd sat half turned and watched for pur- 
suit. 

‘They’ll search the bushes first,” he said. 
‘They’ll not think of the machines for a few min- 
utes. We can hit it up along the highway for four 
or five miles ; then we’d better turn into a side road 
and put out the lights and take off the license plates. 
They’ll telephone ahead possibly and give the li- 
cense number.” 

We were going pretty fast by that time and just 
at that moment I saw a buggy ahead in the road. 
Ferd called to me; but it was too late — I had pressed 
the siren and the very hills echoed. 

“Good heavens, Fan!” he said. “You’ve done 
it now!” 

We topped a rise just then and Ferd looked 
back. The puddlers were running along the road 
toward the place where they had left their cars. It 
was a race for life after that. Ferd bent over and 
pressed the button that put out the tail light, and I 
threw on all the gas I could. 

“It’s getting pretty serious,” Ferd said. “We’ll go 


AFFINITIES 


84 

up for a year or two for this, probably. Stealing a 
machine is no joke.’’ 

‘If it comes to that I’ll steer the thing over a 
bank and die with it!” I said, with my jaw set. 
“Ferd, there’s something wrong somewhere ! Listen 
to that knocking!” 

The engine was not behaving well. It was not 
hitting right and it was telling on our speed. As 
we topped a long rise Ferd saw the lights of an- 
other car appear over the crest of the last hill. 
Down in the valley ahead lay a village, sound asleep. 
We raced through it like mad. A man in his shirt- 
sleeves rushed out of a house and yelled something 
to us about stopping, that we were under arrest. 
We almost went over him. 

The race would be over soon, that was clear. The 
car was making time, but not better time than the 
other machine. I do not know how I got the idea, 
but we went limping and banging along until we had 
reached the edge of the town, and just beyond, be- 
side the road, was a barn, with the doors open. I 
turned the car in there, shut off the engine and put 
out the lamps. Ferd caught the idea at once and 
leaped out and closed the doors. 

“Good girl !” he said. “Unless the farmer heard 
us and comes out to investigate, this is pretty snug, 
lady-love. They’ll pass us without even hesitating.” 

They did not, though. It gives me gooseflesh 


AFFINITIES 


35 


merely to remember the next half-hour. We waited 
inside the door for the car to pass. We could hear 
it coming. But just at the barn it stopped and we 
could hear them arguing. It seems the road forked 
there and they were not certain which way we had 
gone. My knees were shaking with terror and Ferd 
was breathing hard. 

When I look back I think I should have noticed 
how queer Ferd was during the whole thing; and, 
when you think of it, why did he steal the boat at 
the beginning and not just borrow it? But I was 
absolutely unsuspicious; and as for noticing, there 
was no time. 

I lost my courage. I’ll admit, when they stopped; 
and I ran to the back of the barn. There was a horse 
there and I squeezed in beside the thing ; it was com- 
pany anyhow and not running about the country try- 
ing to arrest people who were merely attempting to 
get home. It seemed uneasy and I tried to pat its 
head to soothe it — and it had horns! I almost 
fainted. Somehow or other I climbed out, and Ferd 
was coming toward me. 

‘‘Sh !” he whispered. “They’ve roused the farmer, 
and — holy smoke! — they’re coming in!” 

Somebody had opened one of the doors about six 
inches. That made a path of moonlight across the 
board floor. 

“I dunno why they closed the barn doors to- 


AFFINITIES 


36 

night/’ said the fanner from the opening — “mostly 
we leave ’em open. Now, gentlemen, if you want 
water for your automobile there’s a pail inside the 
door here, and the pump’s round the corner in the 
pig yard.” 

Fred clutched my arm. The moonlight path was 
slowly widening as the door swung open. “Quick!” 
he said ; and the next minute I was climbing a ladder 
to the haymow, with Ferd at my heels. 

One thing saved us and one only: the farmer 
did not come inside to see the car; and whoever did 
come clearly thought it belonged to the place and 
never even glanced at it. As for us we lay face down 
in that awful haymow with openings in the hay big 
enough to fall through, and watched and listened. 
I shall never be the same person again after that 
experience. 

Whenever I get cocky, as Day would say, and re- 
flect on my own virtues, and how few things I do 
that any one could find fault with, not playing 
bridge for more than two and a half cents a point, 
and stopping a flirtation before it reaches any sort 
of gossipy stage, I think of Ferd and myself in that 
awful haymow, with a man below searching round 
that miserable machine for a pail, and Ferd oozing 
a slow drip-drip on the floor below that was enough 
to give us away — like the blood dropping from the 
ceiling in that play of David Belasco’s. 


AFFINITIES 


There was one awful moment before it was all 
over, when the farmer had gone back to bed and 
the man returned the pail. The others were all in 
their machine, yelling to be off. 

“They’ve had time to be gone twenty miles,” one 
of them snarled. “The next time we see them, shoot 
at their tires. It’s the only way.” 

The man with the pail stood in the doorway and 
glanced in. 

“Pipe the car!” he said. “The farmers are the 
only folks with real money these days.” 

He came in with the pail and one of the drops 
from Ferd’s clothes hit him directly on top of the 
head! I heard it spat! He stopped as if he had 
been shot and looked up. I closed my eyes and 
waited for the end; but — ^nothing happened. He 
put away the pail and hurried out, and the machine 
went on. 

It was Ferd who spoke first. He raised himself 
on an elbow and listened. Then he drew a long 
breath, as if he had not breathed for an hour. 

“Well,” he said, “I may not be a thief and a rob- 
ber, as well as an abductor of young married women, 
but I feel like one.” He looked about the haymow, 
and at me, crumpled in my corner. “Really, you 
know,” he said, “this sort of thing isn’t done, 
Fanny.” 

“If it only doesn’t get into the papers !” I wailed. 


38 


AFFINITIES 


‘And if only Day doesn’t hear of it! Ferd, I must 
look a mess.” 

He glanced at me. The moonlight was coming 
through a window. 

“You do look rather frowzy,” he said. 

I think, if there is a psychological moment for 
such things, that was the moment. My aifair, mild 
as it was, was dead from that instant. Day would 
never have said such a thing. Day never takes his 
irritation out on me; the worse I look the more cer- 
tain Day is to reassure me. For instance, Day 
never says that — to him — I am as pretty as the day 
he first met me. He says that I am prettier than I 
ever was, and that every one thinks so. Day has 
a positive talent for being married. 

Well, we sat in the haymow and quarrelled. We 
thought it best to let them go on, give up the search 
and go back to the island for their women compan- 
ions, before venturing out. So we sat and fought. 

“It was stupid,” I said, “to have stolen the boat 
and not borrowed it.” 

“I’d have had to explain you,” said Ferd. 

“You need not have mentioned me. What is a 
lie for, if not for such an emergency^ Couldn’t you 
have found that boatman? That would have ex- 
plained everything.” 

“I couldn’t find the boatman.” 

“Did you try?” 


AFFINITIES 


39 

He turned sulky. 

did my best,” he said. ‘‘I risked my life. Til 
probably have a sick spell as it is. Tve got a chill. 
How did I know the infernal boat had champagne 
in it?’ 

I sat and thought. A lot of things came to me 
that I had not thought of before, such as Ferd hav- 
ing got up the party and put me in my present posi- 
tion, and having been a stupid in more ways than 
one. And what if Day had got home unexpected- 
ly? I said this to Ferd. 

“Why didn’t you think of that sooner?” he de- 
manded brutally. 

“What time is it?” I asked, as sweetly as I could. 

He held his watch up in the moonlight, but of 
course it was full of water and not running. His 
matches and cigarettes were wet, too, and he grew 
more beastly every minute. 

“Ferd,” I said finally, “I’m aftaid lately you’ve 
been thinking that I — that I cared for you. It was 
my fault. I let you think so. I don’t, really. I 
only care for one man and I think you ought to 
know it. I’ve been a shameless flirt. That’s all.” 

Instead of being downcast, he rather brightened 
up at that remark. 

“You’ll break my heart if you say that,” he said, 
trying not to be too cheerful. 

“There’s only one man for me!” I said firmly. 


40 


AFFINITIES 


“It’s not fashionable, but it’s very comforting. It’s 
Day.” 

“I’ll never be the same man again, Fanny,” he 
replied. “Am I not to call you up, or send you 
flowers, or look forward to seeing you at the Coun- 
try Club on Sunday afternoons? Is life to lose all 
its joy?” 

“Oh, we’ll have to meet, of course,” I said largely; 
“but — the other is off for good, Ferd! I find I 
can’t stand too much of you. You’re too heady.” 

Well, he was almost blithe over it, and sat talk- 
ing about Ida, and what a trump she was about 
the time he lost so much on copper, and the way 
she came home from Nice when he had typhoid. It 
was stupid ; but if you can understand me it seemed 
to put a cachet of respectability on our position. 
The more we talked about Day and Ida, the more 
we felt that the tongue of scandal could never touch 
us. We made a pact of platonic friendship, too, 
and shook hands on it; and it shows how dead the 
old affair was when Ferd never even kissed my 
hand. 

About an hour afterward the other car went back 
toward the island and we got up stiffly and crawled 
down the ladder. Ferd had had a nap, and he 
slept with his mouth open! 

We slipped out of the barn in the moonlight and 
reconnoitered. There was no one in sight and the 


AFFINITIES 


41 


house across the road was dark. Ferd took off the 
license plates and put them under one of the seat 
cushions and I looked for the short circuit. I found 
it at last, and Ferd fixed it with his pen-knife. Then 
he threw the doors open and we backed into the road. 
The last thing I remember is that as we started off 
a window was raised in the farmhouse and some- 
body yelled after us to stop. 

‘'Damnation !” said Ferd between his teeth. 
“He’ll telephone ahead and they’ll cut us off!” 

“We needn’t stick to the main road. We can go 
back through the country.” 

We found a lane leading off half a mile farther 
along and I turned into it. It was rough, but its 
very condition argued for safety. As Ferd said, no 
one in his sane mind would choose such a road. The 
secret of the lane came out a mile or so farther on, 
however, when it came to an end in a barnyard. It 
was a blow, really. We did not dare to go back 
and we could not possibly go ahead. 

“I can go up to the house and ask about the road,” 
Ferd said. “The old stage road ought to be round 
here somewhere. If we can’t find it there’s nothing 
to do but to walk. Fan.” 

“I can’t walk,” I said, “and I won’t walk. I’m 
in my stocking feet. I’m through. Let’s just go 
hack and get arrested and have it over. I can’t 
stand much more.” 


AFFINITIES 


42 

“It’s only twelve miles or so to town.” 

“I couldn’t walk twelve miles to escape hanging!’^ 

Ferd crawled out of the car and through a pig 
yard. I heard the pigs squealing. And then for 
five awful minutes I heard nothing except his distant 
knock and muffled voices. Then there was a silence, 
and out of it came Ferd headlong. He fell over 
the fence and landed in the mud beside the car. 

“Quick!” he panted. “Turn round and get back 
to the main road. They’ve got him on the telephone, 
and in another minute ” 

Did you ever try to turn an automobile in a panic 
and a small barnyard, with broken mowing machines 
and old wagons everywhere^ I just could not do 
it. I got part way round, with Ferd begging me for 
Heaven’s sake to get some speed on, when we heard 
people coming from the house on a run, and a woman 
yelling from a window that she could see us and to 
shoot quick. 

There was a field next the barnyard — a pasture, 
I suppose — and the bars were down that led into it. 
I just headed the car for it and shut my eyes. Then 
we were shooting forward in a series of awful bumps, 
with Ferd holding on with both hands, and the noise 
behind was dying away. 

I do not recall the details of that part of the trip. 
Ferd says we went through two creeks and a small 
woods, and entirely through and over a barbed- wire 


AFFINITIES 


43 


fence, which was probably where we got our punc- 
tures. However that may be, in five minutes or so 
we drew up just inside a fence on the other side of 
which was a road. And we had two flat tires. 

Ferd tried to take the fence down, but he could 
not; so I did the only thing I could think of, and 
butted it down with the car. The glass in the lamps 
was smashed, but we were too far gone by that time 
to care. I had just one thought; if the gas only 
held out! 

Ferd was quite sure he knew the way to town, but 
it turned out he did not. For hours and hours we 
bumped along on two tires and two rims, until my 
shoulders felt torn from their sockets. The worst of 
it was the noise we made. Every now and then we 
passed a farmhouse where the lights were going and 
everybody had been roused for the automobile 
thieves ; and, instead of slipping past, we bumped by 
like a circus parade with a calliope. 

The moon was gone by that time; and, our lamps 
being broken, more than once we left the road en- 
tirely and rolled merrily along in a field until we 
brought up against something. And, of course, we 
met a car. We heard it coming, but there was noth- 
ing to do but bump along. It was a limousine, and 
it hailed us and drew up so we could not pass. 

“In trouble?’’ a man called. 

“Nothing serious,” Ferd said peevishly. 


AFFINITIES 


44 

‘‘Glad to give you a hand. You’re cutting youi 
tires to bits.” 

“No; thanks.” 

“I can take you back to town if you like.” 

It was Bill Henderson, Jane’s husband, on his 
way from the club to his mother’s in the country! 
I could not even breathe. Ferd knew it too, that 
minute. 

“We are getting along all right,” he snapped, try- 
ing to disguise his voice. “If you’ll get your car out 
of the way ” 

“Oh, all right, Ferd, old chap!” said Bill, and 
signalled his man to go on. 

We sat as if petrified. Bill was Ida’s cousin! 
The way of the transgressor is hard ; though why one 
should have to lose a reputation built up by years 
of careful living just for one silly indiscretion is 
what gets me. I put a hand on Ferd’s arm. 

“I’m gone!” I wailed. “It will be all over town 
to-morrow. Bill’s the worst old gossip. Oh, Ferd !” 

“He didn’t see you,” Ferd snapped. “For good- 
ness’ sake, Fan, shut up! This is my mess. There 
isn’t any limit to the things he can say about me.” 

We bumped on a little farther. I was crying, I’ll 
admit; my head ached and my spine was jarred 
numb. 

“You’ll have to do one thing,” he said at last. 


AFFINITIES 


45 


“You’ll have to tell Ida it was you. Heaven knows 
what she’ll think.” 

“I’ll die first!” I snapped. 

Well, we got into town finally and it was three- 
thirty by the first clock we saw. Ferd got out and 
looked at the car, and then climbed in again. 

“Better get along a few blocks and then leave it,” 
he said. “It looks something fierce, and so do we.” 

And at that instant, before I could even start the 
engine, we were arrested for stealing the miserable 
thing ! 

“There is some mistake,” Ferd said loftily, but 
looking green in the electric light. “This is Mrs. 
Day Illington and this is her own machine.” 

“Are you Mr. Illington*?” 

“Yes!” said Ferd. 

The man looked very strange, as well he might, 
considering — well, considering the facts that came 
out later. 

“I’ll have to trouble you to come with me,” he 
said, politely enough. “It will be only a short de- 
lay and we’ll get this straightened out. But a car 
answering this description was stolen out the road 
a few miles and headed toward town, and there’s a 
reward offered.” 

He stood on the step and I drove to the station 
house. I had it fixed in my own mind to go home 
and write a letter to Day confessing all, and then 




46 

AFFINITIES 


pack a few things and hide my wretched self for 
the rest of my life. I even planned what to take; 
my jewelry and my checkbook, and only a dinner 
dress or two; and I wrote the letter to Day — in my 
mind — and one to Ida, telling her it was only a lark, 
but it had gone wrong without any fault of mine. 
Then we drew up at the station. 

Ferd got out and went in, and the officer turned 
on the pavement to help me out. But it was my 
chance and I took it; I just threw on the gas full 
and shot ahead down the street. He yelled after 
me and then began shooting. One bullet must have 
struck the good rear tire, for it collapsed and al- 
most turned the car round. But I was desperate. I 
never looked back. I just drove for all I was worth 
down the street to its end, and after that down other 
streets, and still others. All the time I was saying 
I would rather die, and going round corners on two 
wheels, or one wheel and a rim. 

Finally I got into a part of town I knew and 
pulled up half a block from my own house. I re' 
call that and leaving the engine still going, and that 
hideous nightmare of a machine standing by the 
curb, with its tires lying out on the road in ribbons 
and its lamps smashed; and I remember going up 
the steps and finding the hall door unlocked. Then 
I recall nothing more for a while. I fainted. 

It was Martha, one of the housemaids, who found 


AFFINITIES 


47 


me, I believe, as she was going out to early mass. 
They got me upstairs to bed and there was no use 
trying to run away that night; I could hardly 
stand. They got me some hot tea and a doctor and 
a trained nurse, and in the morning before breakfast 
Day came back. He tiptoed into my room and tried 
to kiss me, looking awfully frightened; but I would 
not let him. 

‘'Send the nurse out!’’ I whispered. So he did; 
and still I would not let him kiss me. “Not until 
I’ve told you something,” I said feebly. “You may 
not care to when you’ve heard it all.” 

He looked so big and so dependable and so wor- 
ried that I could have screamed; but I had to tell 
him. Bill Henderson might have recognised me; 
and Ferd, as like as not, would be goose enough to 
tell Ida the whole story. And, anyhow, there’s noth- 
ing like perfect honesty between husband and wife. 

“Day,” I said tremulously, “I’m a felon — a thief ! 
I — I stole a lot of champagne last night and an au- 
tomobile, and broke down fences, and almost ran 
over a policeman, and was arrested — or Ferd was — 
Day, don’t look like that!” For his face was ter- 
rible. He had gone quite white. 

“You !” he said. 

“Get up and stand by the window, looking out,” 
I implored him. “I can tell you better if I can’t 
see your eyes.” 




48 

AFFINITIES 


So he did and I told him the whole thing. He 
never moved, and I kept getting more and more 
frightened. It sounded worse, somehow, when I 
told it. When I had finished he did not come to 
me as I had hoped. He said : 

‘I’d like a few minutes to get used to it, Fan. I’ll 
go out and walk about a bit. It’s — it’s just a lit- 
tle hard to grasp, all at once.” 

So he went out, and I lay and cried into my pil- 
low; but when the nurse had brought me some tea 
and raised the shades, and the sun came in, I felt 
a little better. He had not been noisy, anyhow; 
and in time perhaps he would forgive me, though 
probably he would never really trust me again. I 
got up in a chair and had my hair tied with a ribbon 
and my nails done, and put on my new negligee with 
lace sleeves; and I felt pretty well, considering. 

At nine o’clock the policeman on the beat asked to i 
see me. I sent down word that I was indisposed; I 
but he said it was urgent and would only take a 
moment. The nurse put a blanket over my knees 
and a pillow behind me, and the officer came in. I 
was frightened; but after all my only real fear had 
been Day, and now that he knew. Fate could hardly 
have a fresh blow. But it had, all right. 

“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” said the officer, 
“but it’s about your car.” 

“Yes^” My lips were trembling. 


AFFINITIES 


49 


“It’s been faimd; I found it — and only a block 
or so away, ma’am; but it’s in bad shape — lamps 
smashed and tires chewed to ribbons. It’s a sight, 
for sure!” 

“But that’s not my car!” I exclaimed, forgetting 
caution. 

“I guess there’s no mistake about it, ma’am* 
Those fellows that stole it, up the river, must have 
climbed fences with it.” 

“How do you know it is my car^” I was absolute- 
ly bewildered. 

“These are your license plates, aren’t they? I 
found them under the seat.” 

They were my license plates! 

Day came in shortly after and tiptoed into the 
room. The nurse was out. He came over to me 
and stooped down. 

“It took me a little by surprise, honey,” he said; 
“but that’s over now. You’ve been foolish, but 
you’ve had your lesson. Let’s kiss and be friends 
again.” 

“Just a moment. Day,” I said calmly. “Have 
you had your lesson?” 

“Just what do you mean?” 

He followed my eyes to the table and the license 
plates were there. He actually paled. 

“Where did you get them?” 


AFFINITIES 


50 

‘‘Under the seat of the car Ferd and I stole last 
night at Devil’s Island — ^my car, which you said 
was being overhauled!” 

He drew a long breath. Then he got down on his 
knees and put his head in my lap. 

“I’ve had my lesson — honest, honey!” he said. 
“Some darned fool suggested a picnic on one of 
those islands — ^mixed couples — and I was ass enough 
to agree. I took Ida Jackson. We didn’t have any 
picnic — the champagne was stolen ” 

“Ferd and I ” I put in. 

“And then my car went 

“My car — and I took it.” 

“And we spent all the evening and part of the 
night chasing the thing for fear you’d hear of it!” 
He looked up at me and there were dark circles 
round his eyes. “I haven’t been to bed at all, 
Iioney,” he said humbly. “It’s been a rotten night ! 
I’ve had enough affinity for the rest of my life. 
There’s nobody like you !” 

I would not kiss him just then, but I let him lie 
down on my couch and hold my hand until he 
dropped asleep. Somehow the words of Ferd’s silly 
card kept running through my head: 

Another woman now and then 
Is relished by the best of men. 


AFFINITIES 


51 


My little affair with Ferd had seemed harmless 
enough and the picnic had been a lark; but Day and 
Ida had had a picnic and it had been a lark — only 
the shoe was on the other foot, and it hurt! 

And somehow, as I sat there, it seemed to me that 
the affinity business was only fun because it was. 
dangerous. We were all children, and life was a 
Fourth of July, enchanting because it was risky. 

Day was sleeping, with his mouth shut ! I leaned 
over and kissed him as he dozed. 

Sitting there, with Day asleep, I went over the 
events of the night, and I knew that Ferd had had 
his lesson, too, and that, having been burnt, he 
would not play with fire again — at least not until 
the blister had healed; for Ferd had seen the island 
picnickers and had learned that they were not pud- 
dlers. He had seen Ida and Day and, worst of all, 
he had known that it was Day who was pursuing us. 

I thought of that hour in the haymow, with Day 
and the others below, and Ferd dripping; and very 
quietly, so as not to waken my husband, I went into 
a paroxysm of mirth. 















THE FAMILY; FRIEND 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


I 

I ’VE thought the thing over and over, and hon- 
estly I don’t know where it went wrong. It 
began so well. I planned it out, and it went ex- 
actly as I’d expected up to a certain point. Then 
it blew up. 

There’s no argument about it, a girl has to look 
out for herself. The minute the family begin mix- 
ing in there’s trouble. 

The day after I came out mother and I had a real 
heart-to-heart talk. I’d been away for years at 
school, and in the summers we hadn’t seen much of 
each other. She played golf all day and I had my 
tennis and my horse. And in the evenings there 
were always kid dances. So we really got acquainted 
that day. 

She rustled into my room and gazed at what was 
left of my ball gown, spread out on the bed. 

‘‘It really went rather well last night,” she said. 
“Yes, mother,” I replied. 

“I’ve sent the best of the flowers to the hospital.” 
“Yes, mother.” 

“You had more flowers than Bessie Willing.” 

55 


56 


AFFINITIES 


I shrugged my shoulders, and for some reason 
or other that irritated her. 

“For heaven’s sake, Kit,” she said sharply, “I 
wish you’d show a little appreciation. Your father 
has spent a fortune on you, one way and another. 

The supper alone last night But that’s not 

what I came to talk about.” 

“No, mother?” 

“No. Are you going to continue to waste your 
time on Henry Baring?” 

“I rather enjoy playing round with him. That’s 
all it amounts to.” 

“Not at all,” said mother in her best manner. “It 
keeps the others away.” 

“As, for instance?” I asked politely. 

She was getting on my nerves. I didn’t mean to 
marry Henry, but I did mean to carry on my own 
campaign. 

“You know very well that there are only three 
marriageable men in town. There are eleven de- 
butantes. And — I don’t care to be unkind, but at 
least four of them are — are ” 

“I know,” I said wearily — “better looking than I 
am. Go ahead.” 

“You’re not at all ugly,” mother put in hastily. 
“A great many people said nice things about you 
last night. The only thing I want to impress on 
you is that Madge will have to come out next year, 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 57 

and that you’ve been reared with expensive tastes.” 

“Fve got brains. Most of the other eleven 
haven’t.” 

“Brains are a liability, not an asset.” 

“That’s an exploded idea, mother. The only 
times they are a liability is when they are ruined by 
too much family interest.” 

“That sounds impertinent,” she said coldly. 

“Not at all ; it’s good business. If I’m to put over 
anything worth while, I shall have to work along 
my own lines. I can’t afford to have my style 
cramped.” 

She raised her eyebrows at that, for she hates 
slang. But she looked relieved too. When I think 
of how sure of myself I was that day I could 
rave! 

“Then you’re not going to waste any more time 
on Henry *?” 

“I think,” I said reflectively, “that I’m going to 
use Henry quite a lot. But I don’t intend to marry 
him.” 

Yes, that’s what I said. I remember it perfectly 
well. I was putting a dab of scent behind my ears 
at the time. I feel that I shall never use the stuff 
again. 

Well, mother went out quite cheered. It was 
the first real mother-and-daughter talk we’d had for 
a long time. When she had gone I went into my 


AFFINITIES 


58 

bathroom and locked the door and opened the win- 
dows and smoked two cigarettes, thinking things out. 

The family is opposed to my smoking, and no one 
knows except mother’s maid, who fixes my hair, 
and the gardener. When for the third time he had 
seen smoke coming out of my bathroom window, 
and had rushed upstairs with a fire grenade and all 
the servants at his heels, I was compelled to take 
him into my confidence. 

Well, I smoked and thought things out. I am not 
beautiful, but Pm extremely chic^ and at night, with 
a touch of rouge, I do very well. I have always 
worn sophisticated clothes. I thought they suited 
my style. But s6 did all the others. If I was to do 
anything distinguished it would have to be on new 
lines. 

‘Early Victorian I said to myself. 

But the idea of me Lydia-languishing, prunes-and- 
prisming round the place was too much. 

Athletics*? Well, they were not bad. There’s 
a lot of chance in golf, although tennis is blowzy. 
I look well in sport clothes too. But if a girl is a 
dub at a game a man is apj; to tell her so, and I 
know my own disposition. If he criticised me, be- 
fore I knew it I’d be swatting my prey with a mashie 
or a niblick, and everything over. Three men, 
mother had said. I knew who they were. They had 
all sent me flowers and danced with me, without 


* THE FAMILY FRIEND 59 

saying a word, and then taken me back to mother 
and rushed for the particular married woman they 
were interested in. 

Oh, Vm not blind! All the men I knew, old 
enough to amount to anything, were interested in 
some married woman. I drive my own car, and I 
used to meet them on lonely back roads, Lillian 
Marshall and Tom Connor, Toots Warrington and 
Russell Hill, and the rest of them. 

I ask you, what chance had a debutante among 
them? There were two things to decide that after- 
noon, the man and the method. I was out now. The 
family had agreed to let me alone. I had a year 
before me, until Madge came out. And I knew I 
could count on Henry Baring to help me all he 
could. He was a sort of family friend. When he 
couldn’t get me he would take Madge to kid picnics, 
and mother used to call on him to make a fourth 
at bridge or fill in at a dinner. You know the 
sort. 

He worked at something or other, and made 
enough to keep him and pay his club bills, and to 
let him send flowers to debutantes, and to set up an 
occasional little supper to pay his way socially. But 
nobody ever thought of marrying him. He was tall 
and red-headed and not very handsome. Have I 
said that? 

So I counted on Henry. It makes me bitter even 


AFFINITIES 


60 

to write it. His very looks were solid and de- 
pendable, although I underestimated his hair. Tve 
said I had brains. Well, I had too many brains. 
Mother was right — the world doesn’t come to the 
clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one- 
idea-at-a-time people. 

I’m going to tell this thing, because a lot of peo- 
ple are saying I threw away a good thing, and 
mother 

I have a certain amount of superstition in me. 
I remember, when I was about to be confirmed at 
school, I was told to open the Bible at random and 
take the first verse my eyes fell on for a sort of 
motto through life. Mine was to the effect that as 
a partridge sits on eggs and fails to hatch them, so 
too the person who gets riches without deserving 
them. It rather bothered me at the time. Well, it 
never will again. 

So I took three cigarettes and marked each one 
with the initials of an eligible. Then I shook them 
up in a box and drew Russell Hill. I knew then 
that I had my work cut out for me. Even with 
Henry’s help it was going to be a hard pull. Rus- 
sell Hill was spoiled. Probably out of the other 
eleven at least nine had Russell in the backs of their 
heads. And he knew every move of the game. 
They’d all been tried on him — ^golf and moonlight 
and 1830 methods and pro and anti suffrage and 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 61 

amateur theatricals and ingenue technique and the 
come-hither glance. So far they had all failed. 

The girls were coming in for tea and to talk 
things over, and as I dressed I was thinking hard. 
Mother had gone out for a golf lesson, so I sent 
the rest of my cigarettes down to the drawing room 
and picked up a book. I remember only one line 
of that book. Believe me, as a matrimonial text 
it had the partridge one going. The girl in the story 
had been crazy about a man. 

‘1 always had my hand in his coat pocket!” she 
said. 

Don’t misunderstand, she was not robbing him. 
She slipped her hand into his coat pocket to let him 
know how fond she was of him. And after a mo- 
ment, she said, he always put his hand in, too, over 
hers. And he ended her slave. He was a very 
sophisticated man, up to every move of the game, 
and he ended her slave! 

But Russell would take tact. A man likes to 
be adored, but he hates to look foolish. The first 
thing was, of course, to get his attention. I was 
only one of a dozen. True, he had sent me flowers, 
but he probably did what all the others did — had a 
standing order and a box of his cards at the florist’s. 
I wasn’t fooled for a minute. To him I was a flap- 
per, nothing else. Whether flapper is a term of re- 
proach or one of tribute depends on whether the 


AFFINITIES 


62 

girl is a debutante or in the first line of the chorus 
of a musical show. Oh, I wasn’t very old, but I 
knew my way about. 

Margaret North came first and the rest trailed 
in soon after. Everybody talked about the ball, and 
said it had been wonderful, and I sat there and 
sized them up. I had a fight on my hands, and I 
knew it. 

There was a picture of Madge sitting round, and 
Margaret North picked it up and took it to the 
light. Margaret is one of the four mother had so 
delicately referred to. 

“You’ll have to hurry. Kit,” she said. “Sister’s 
a raving beauty.” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” I observed casually. “Beau- 
ty’s not everything. 

The girl in the book had not been a beauty. 

“It’s all there is,” said Margaret. “Figure 
doesn’t count any more. Anybody can have a figure 
who has a decent dressmaker.” 

“How about brains I asked. 

There was a squeal at that. 

“Cut ’em out,” said Ellie Clavering. “Hide ’em. 
Disguise ’em. Brains are — are clandestine.” 

“Anyhow,” somebody put in, “Kit isn’t worrying; 
she’s got Henry.” 

That’s how they’d fixed me. I knew what it 
meant. It was a cheap game, but they were play- 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


63 


ing it. They were going to tie me to Henry. They 
would ask us together, and put us together at din- 
ners, and talk about us together. In the end every- 
body would think of us together. Fd seen it done 
before. It’s ruined more debutantes than anything 
else. They’d put me out of the running before I’d 
started. 

I sat back with my cup of tea and listened, and 
it made me positively ill. It wasn’t that they were 
clever. They were just instinctive. I could have 
screamed. And having disposed of me, having hand- 
cuffed me to Henry Baring and lost the key, so to 
speak, they went on to the real subject, which was 
Russell. 

Mother had said there were three eligibles. But 
to those little idiots round the tea table there was 
only one. They’d been friendly enough as long as 
Henry and I were on the rack. But the moment 
Russell’s name was mentioned there was a difference. 
They didn’t talk so much and they eyed each other 
more. Ella Clavering put both lemon and cream 
in her tea, and drank it without noticing. Somebody 
said very impressively that she understood the affair 
with Toots was off, and that Russell had said, ac- 
cording to report, that he was glad of it. He’d have 
a little time to himself now. 

‘That means, I dare say,” I said languidly, “tha^ 


64 


AFFINITIES 


Russell is ready to bring his warmed-over affections 
to some of us!'’ 

There was a sort of electric silence for a minute. 

‘‘It will take a very sophisticated person to land 
Russell after Toots," I went on. “He’s past the 
ingenue stage.’’ 

“If a girl is pretty she always has a chance with 
Russell.’’ Margaret, of course. She was standing 
in front of a mirror and I had my eyes on her. Evi- 
dently what I had said made an impression, for she 
cocked her hat down an inch more over her right 
eye and watched to see the effect. 

“You ought to wear earrings, dear,” I said. “You 
need just that dash of chicJ’ 

Just for a moment I could see in every eye a sort 
of vision of Toots Warrington, with the large pearls 
she always wore in her ears — Toots, who had had 
Russell tame-catting for her off and on for years ! 

Oh, they fell for it all right! I poured myself 
another cup of tea to hide the triumph in my face. 
Little idiots! If he was sick of Toots he’d hate 
everything that reminded him of her. I could see 
the crowd of them swaggering in at the next party, 
in their best imitation of Toots Warrington, with 
eyes slightly narrowed, and earrings. And I\ould 
see Russell’s soul turn over in revolt and go out^and 
take a walk. I knew a lot about men even then, but 
not enough. I know more now. 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


65 


II 

That night Henry Baring came to call. Being a 
sort of family friend he had a way of walking in un- 
expectedly, with a box of candy for whoever saw 
him first. If mother and I were out, he played 
chess with father. If there was no one in, he was 
quite likely to range round the lower floor, and ask 
the butler about his family, and maybe read for an 
hour or so in the library. The servants adored him, 
but he was matrimonially impossible. 

That night he came. I was at home alone. 

“You will take two full days’ rest after your 
ball,” mother had said. “I have seen enough de- 
butantes looking ready for the hospital the first week 
they came out.” 

So I was alone that evening, and mother and 
father had gone to a dinner. I was sulky, I don’t 
mind saying. At six o’clock a box of flowers had 
come, but they were only from Henry and not ex- 
citing. “Thought I’d send them to-day,” he wrote 
on his card. “Didn’t like the idea of my personal 
offering nailed to the club wall.” 

About nine o’clock I put on my silk dressing gown 
and went down to the library for the book about the 
girl who always had her hand in the man’s coat 
pocket. I had got clear in when I saw Henry’s red 
head over the top of a deep chair. 


AFFINITIES 


66 

‘‘Come in he called. “I was told there was no 
one at home, but methinks I know the step and the 
rustle.” 

“Don’t look round,” I said sharply. “I’m not 
dressed.” 

“Can’t you stay a few minutes?” 

“Certainly not.” 

“If I don’t look?” 

Well, it seemed silly to run. I was more covered 
up than I’d been the night before in my ball gown. 
Besides, it had occurred to me that Henry could be 
useful if he would. A sort of plan had popped into 
my head. Inspiration, I called it then. 

“Pretty nice last night, wasn’t it?” he asked, talk- 
ing to the fireplace. “You looked some person. Kit, 
believe me.” 

“Considering that I’ve spent nineteen years get- 
ting ready, it should have gone off rather well.” 

“I suppose I’ll never see you any more.” 

“This looks like it! Why?” 

“You’ll be so popular.” 

“Oh, that! I’m not sure, Henry. I’m not beau- 
tiful.” 

He jumped at that, and almost turned round. 

“Not beautiful!” he said. “You’re — you’re the 
loveliest thing that ever lived, and you know it.” 

It began to look to me as if he wouldn’t help after 
all. There was a sort of huskiness in his voice, a — 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


Oh, well, you know. I began on the plan, how- 
ever. 

‘ You’M see me, all right,” I said. “Pll have other 
friends, of course. I hope so anyhow. But when 
one thinks who and what they are ” 

“Good gracious. Kit! What are you driving at?” 

“Pm young,” I said. “I know that. But I’m 
not ignorant. And a really nice girl with 
ideals ” 

“I’ll have to get up,” he said suddenly. “I’ll 
stand with my back to you, if you insist, but I’ll 
have to get up. What’s all this about ideals?” 

“You know very well,” I put in with dignity. “If 
every time I meet a nice man people cwne to me 
with stories about him, or mother and father warn 
me against him, what am I to do?” 

“Can’t you stand behind a chair and let me face 
you? This is serious.” 

“Oh, turn round,” I said recklessly. “If I hear 
any one coming I can run. Anyhow, it may be un- 
conventional but I’m fully clothed.” 

“Are you being warned against me?” he threw 
at me like a bomb. “Because, if — if you are, it’s 
absurd nonsense. I’m no saint, and I’d never be fit 
for you to — What silly story have you heard. Kit?” 

He was quite white, and his red hair looked like a 
conflagration. 

“It’s not about you at all ; it’s about Russell Hill.” 


AFFINITIES 


68 

It took him a moment to breathe normally again. 

‘‘Oh — Russell he said. “Well, that’s probably 
nonsense too. You don’t mean to say your people 
object to your knowing Russell *?” 

“Not quite that,” I said. “But I can’t have him 
here, or go round with him, or anything of that 
sort.” 

“Do they venture to give a reason?” 

“Toots Warrington.” 

It’s queer about men, the way they stand up for 
each other. Henry knew as well as he knew any- 
thing that most of the girls we both knew were 
crazy about Russell. And if he cared for me — and 
the way he acted made me suspicious — ^he had a 
good chance to throw Russell into the discard that 
night. But he didn’t. I knew well enough he 
wouldn’t. 

“That’s perfect idiocy,” he said sternly. “So- 
ciety is organised along certain lines, and maybe if 
you and I had anything to do with it we’d change 
things. But there is no commandment or social law 
or anything else against a man having a married 
woman for a friend.” 

“Friend!” 

“Exactly — friend.” 

“I don’t care to have anything to do with him.” 

“You needn’t, of course. But you owe it to Rus- 
sell to give him a chance to set things straight. Any- 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


69 

how he and Mrs. Warrington are not seeing each 
other much any more. It’s off.” 

“The very fact that you say it is ‘off’ shows that 
it was once ‘on.’ ” 

He waved his hands in perfect despair. If I’d 
rehearsed him he couldn’t have picked up his cues 
any better. 

“I’m going to tell him,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. 
It’s — it’s libellous.” 

“I don’t want him coming here explaining. I am 
not even interested.” 

“You’re a perfect child, a stubborn child! Your 
mind’s in pigtails, like your hair.” 

Yes, my hair was down. I have rather nice hair. 

“If he comes here,” I said with my eyes wide, 
“he will have to come when mother and father are 
out.” 

“I’ll bring him,” said Henry valiantly. “I’m not 
going to see him calumniated, that’s all.” Then 
something struck his sense of humour and he 
chuckled. “It will be a new and valuable experi- 
ence to him,” he said, “to have to come clandes- 
tinely. Do him good !” 

I went upstairs then. It had been a fair day’s 
work. 

But it’s hard to count on a family. Mother 
sprained her ankle getting out of the car that night 
and was laid up for three days. I chafed at first. 


AFFINITIES 


Henry might change his mind or one of the eleven 
get in some fine work. We declined everything that 
week, and I made some experiments with my hair 
and the aid of mother’s maid. I wanted a sort of 
awfully feminine method — not sappy but not at all 
sophisticated. Toots Warrington is always waved 
and netted, and all the girls by that time had got ear- 
rings and were going round waved and netted too. 

I wanted to fix my hair like a girl who slips her 
hand into a man’s coat pocket because she can’t 
help it, and then tries to get it out, and can’t be- 
cause his hand has got hold of it. 

Then one night I got it. Henry had dropped in, 
and found mother with her foot up and the look of 
a dyspeptic martyr on her face, and father with a 
cold and a thermometer in his mouth. 

“I’ve come to take Kit to the movies,” he an- 
nounced calmly. ‘Tar be it from me not to con- 
tribute to the entertainment of a young lady who is 
just out !” 

“Full of gerbs!” father grunted, referring to the 
movies of course, not me. But mother agreed. 

“Do take her out, Henry,” she said. “She’s been 
on my nerves all evening.” 

So we went, and there was a girl in one of the pic- 
tures who had exactly the right hair arrangement. 
She had it loose and wavy about her face, and it 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 71 

blew about the way things do blow in the movies, 
and in the back it was a sort of soft wad. 

It shows the association of ideas that I found my 
hand in Henry’s coat pocket, and he grabbed it like 
a lunatic. 

“You darling!” he said thickly. “Don’t do that 
unless you mean it. I can’t stand it.” 

I had to be very cool on the way home in the 
motor or he would have kissed me. 

Mother and I went to a reception on the following 
Tuesday, and I wondered if mother noticed. She 
did. Coming home in the motor she turned and 
stared at me. 

“Thank heaven. Kit,” she said, “you still look 
like a young girl. All at once Ellie and the others 
look like married women. Earrings! It’s absurd. 
And such earrings ! I am quite sure,” she went on, 
eying me, “that some of them had been smoking. 
I got an unmistakable whiff of it when I was talk- 
ing with Bessie Willing.” 

Well, I had rinsed my mouth with mouth wash 
and dabbed my lips with cologne, so she got noth- 
ing from me. But I tasted like a drug store. 

I am not smoking now. I am not doing much of 
anything. I — but I’m coming to that. 

I’m no hypocrite. I’d been raised for one pur- 
pose, and that was to marry well. If I did it in my 
own way, and you think my way not exactly ethical, 


72 


AFFINITIES 


I can’t help it. This thing of sitting back and let- 
ting somebody find you and propose to you is ridicu- 
lous. There is only one life, and we have to make 
the best we can of it. 

Ethical! Don’t girls always have the worst of 
it anyhow^ They can’t go and ask the man. They 
have to lie in wait and plan and scheme, or get left 
and have their younger sisters come out and crowd 
them, and at twenty-five or so begin to regard any 
man at all as a prospect. Maybe my methods sound 
a bit crude, but compared with the average girl I 
know, I was delicate. I didn’t play up my attrac- 
tions, at least not more than was necessary. I was 
using my mind, not my body. 

Ill 

On Tuesday night I was going to a dance. Mother 
and father were dining out and were to meet me 
later, so I was free until ten o’clock. That night 
Henry brought Russell Hill. 

I kept them waiting a few minutes, and came 
down ready for the car. At the last minute I pulled 
my hair a bit loose over my face, and the effect was 
exactly right. 

Henry was horribly uncomfortable, and left in 
a few minutes. He was going with some people to 
the dance, and would see us later. About all he 
said was with his usual tact. 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 73 

‘You two ought to get together, ’’ he said. 
“There’s a lot too much being whispered these days, 
and not enough talking out loud.” 

With that he went, and we two were left facing 
each other. 

“This is one of Henry’s inspirations. Miss Kath- 
erine,” Russell said. “I — I don’t usually have to 
wait until the family is out before I make a call.” 

“Families are queer,” I said non-committally. 
There was a window open and I stood near it, un- 
der a pink lamp, and let my hair blow about. 

“Are we going to sit down, or am I to be ban- 
ished as soon as I’ve explained that I am a safe 
companion for a debutante *?” 

He was plainly laughing at me, although he was 
uncomfortable too. And I have some spirit left. 

* “I am afraid you are giving me credit for too 
much interest,” I said. “This is Henry’s idea, you 
know. You needn’t defend yourself to me. You 
look — entirely safe.” 

He hated that. No man likes to look entirely 
safe. He put his hands in his pockets and half 
closed his eyes. 

“Humph!” he said. “Then I gather that this 
whole meeting is a mistake. I’m respectable enough 
to be uninteresting, and the ban your people have 
placed on me doesn’t particularly concern you!” 

“That’s not quite true,” I said slowly. “I — if I 


AFFINITIES 


74 

ever got a chance to know you really well, I’m sure 
we’d be — but I’ll never get a chance, you know.” 

“Upon my word,” he broke out, “I’d like to know 
just what your people have heard ! But that doesn’t 
matter. What really matters” — he had hardly 
taken his eyes off me — “what really matters is that 
I am going to see you again. Often!” 

“It’s impossible.” 

“Rot! We’re always going to the same places. 
Am I absolutely warned off?” 

“You’re not. But I am.” 

He began to walk up and down the room. Half 
an hour before he had never given me a thought. 
Henry, I knew, had lugged him there by sheer force 
and a misplaced sense of justice. And now he was 
pacing about in a rage ! 

He stopped rather near me. 

“If it’s Mrs. Warrington all the fuss is about, it’s 
imbecile,” he said. “In the first place, there never 
was anything to it. In the second place, it’s all 
over anyhow.” 

“I don’t know what the fuss is about.” 

“You know the whole thing. Don’t pretend you 
don’t. You’ve got the face of a little saint, with 
all that fluffy hair, but your eyes don’t belong to 
the rest, young lady. Are you going to dance with 
me to-night?” 

“I’m afraid not.” 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


75 


“Well, you’ll give me a little time, won’t you? 
I suppose we can sit in a closet and talk, or hide on 
a veranda.” 

‘It’s — it’s rather sneaking, isn’t it?” 

“That doesn’t hurt it any for me.” 

So I promised, and, the car being announced, he 
put my wrap round my shoulders. 

“Stunning hair you’ve got,” he said from behind 
me. “Thank heaven for hair that isn’t marceled 
and glued up in a net !” 

I held out my hand in the hall, and he took it. 

“I’m not such a bad lot after all, am I?” he de- 
manded. 

With my best spontaneous gesture I put my free 
hand over his as it held mine. 

“I’m so sorry, so terribly sorry, if I’ve misunder- 
stood,” I said earnestly. 

Wallace had gone to the outer door. Russell Hill 
stooped over and kissed my hand. 

Well, it was working. An hour before I was one 
of what I’d heard he had called “the dolly dozen.” 
Now, by merely letting him understand that he 
couldn’t have what he’d never wanted, he was eager. 

We sat out one dance under the stairs, and an 
intermission in a pantry while the musicians who 
had been stationed there were getting their supper. 
He tried to hold my hand and I drew it away — not 
too fast, but so he could understand the struggle I 


76 


AFFINITIES 


was having between duty and inclination. And we 
talked about love. 

I said I liked to play round with men and have a 
good time and all that sort of thing, but that I 
thought I was naturally cold. 

“You cold?” he said. “It’s only that the right 
man has not come along.” 

“I’ve known a good many. A good many have — 
have ” 

“Cared for you? Of course. They’re not fools 
or blind. Look here, I’m going to ring you up now 
and then.” 

“I think you’d better not.” 

“If I’m not to see you and not to telephone, how’s 
this friendship of ours to get on?” 

“People who are real friends don’t need to see 
each other.” 

“That’s the first real debutante speech you’ve 
made to-night. Now, see here. I’m going to see you 
again, and often. And I’m going to ring you up. 
What’s your tailor’s name?” 

I told him, and he put it down on his dance card. 

“All right,” he said. “Herschenrother is now my 
middle name, and if it’s not convenient to talk, you 
can give me the high sign.” 

Toots Warrington came along just then with an 
army officer she’d taken on. They got clear round 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 77 

the palms and into the pantry before they saw us, 
and her face was funny. 

Mother and I had another heart-to-heart talk that 
night on the way home. Father had gone a couple 
of hours earlier and we had the car to ourselves. 
Mother was tired and irritable. 

“It seemed to me, Kit,’’ she observed, “that you 
danced with every hopeless ineligible there. You 
danced three times with Henry.” 

“For heaven’s sake, mother,” I snapped, “let poor 
Henry alone. Henry is the most useful person I 
know.” 

“You can’t play with red-headed people and not 
get burned,” mother said with unconscious humour. 
“He’s very fond of you. Kit. I watched him to- 
night.” 

“The fonder the better,” I said flippantly. Yes, 
that’s what I said. When I look back on that eve- 
ning and think how little Henry entered into my 
plans, and the rest of it, it makes me cold. 

“I want you to do one thing — ^just one, mother: 
I want you to be very cool to Russell Hill.” 

' “Cool!” 

“And I want you to forbid me to see him.” 

“I’m not insane, Katherine.” 

“Listen, mother,” I said desperately. “All his 
life Russell Hill has had everything he wanted. 
He’s had so much that — that he’s got a sort of so- 


78 


AFFINITIES 


cial indigestion. The only things he wants now are 
the things he can’t have. So he can’t have me.’’ 

Mother’s not very subtle. And she was alarmed. 
I can still see her trying to readjust her ideas, and 
getting tied up in them, and coming a mental crop- 
per, so to speak. 

“If he can’t have me he’ll want me.” 

“I’m not sure of it. He ” 

“Mother,” I said in despair, “you’ve been mar- 
ried for twenty years, and you know less about men 
in a month than I do in a minute. Please forbid 
him the house — not in so many words, but act it.” 

“Why?” she said feebly. 

“Anything you can think of — ^Toots Warrington 
will do.” 

She got out her salts and held them to her nose. 

“I feel as though I’m losing my mind,” she said 
at last. “But if you’re set on it ” 

That was all until we got home. Then on the 
stairs I thought of something. 

“Oh, yes,” I said. “No matter what I am do- 
ing, mother, if Herschenrother the tailor calls up I 
want to go to the telephone.” 

I can still see her staring after me with her mouth 
open as I went up the stairs. 

Herschenrother called me up the next morning, 
and asked me how I was, and how the dragons were, 
and if there was any chance of my walking in the 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


11 

park at five o’clock. I said there was, and called 
up Henry and asked him to walk with me. 

“I should say so,” he said. “You’ve only got to 
ask me. Kit. I’m always ready to hang round.” 

There was rather a bad half hour in the park, and 
for a time I felt that Henry had been a wrong move. 
But, as it turned out he hadn’t, for Russell took 
advantage of somebody’s signalling to Henry from 
a machine to say: 

“Just a bit afraid of me still, aren’t you^” 

“Why?” 

“You brought Henry. I know the signs. You 
asked him, and he’s so set up about it that he’s walk- 
ing on clouds.” 

“I am afraid.” 

“Of me?” 

“Of myself.” 

He caught my arm as he helped me across a pud- 
dle, and squeezed it. 

“Good girl!” he said. 

And later on, when Henry was called again — . 
he’s terribly popular, Henry is — ^he had another 
chance. 

“I’m going to see you alone if I have to steal you,” 
he said. 

Herschenrother called up again the next day, and 
Madge, who had come home for the Christmas holi- 
days, called me. 


AFFINITIES 


80 

‘'Gee, Kit,’’ she said, “you must be getting a 
trousseau. That tailor’s always on the phone.” 

I went. 

“Hello,” said Russell’s voice, “how about that 
fitting*?” 

“I don’t know. I’m horribly busy to-day.” 

“It’s very important. I — I can’t go ahead with- 
out it.” 

“Oh, all right,” I said. Madge was listening and 
I had to be careful. “I must have the suit.” 

“You can have anything I’ve got. How about 
the Art Gallery*? Art is long and time is fleeting. 
Nobody goes there.” 

“Very well, four o’clock,” I replied, and rang off. 

“Rather a nice voice,” Madge said, eying me. 
“Think I’ll go along. Kit. I’ve been shut up in 
school until the mere thought of even a good-look- 
ing tailor makes me thrill.” 

She was so insistent that I had to go to mother 
finally, and mother told her she would have to prac- 
tise. She was furious. Really, mother turned out 
to be a most understanding person. I got to be 
quite fond of her. We had a chat that afternoon 
that brought us closer together than ever. 

“Things are doing pretty well, mother,” I said 
when she’d finished Madge. 

“He must be interested when he would take that 
absurd name.” 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


81 


‘And the Art Gallery! I dare say he has never 
voluntarily been inside of one in his life.” 

“Kit,” mother said, “what about your father?” 

“Haven't you told him?” 

“No; he wouldn't understand.” 

Of course not. I knew men well enough for 
that. They believe that life and marriage arrange 
themselves. That it's all a sort of combination of 
Providence and chance. Predestination plus oppor- 
tunity ! 

“Can't you tell him you've heard something about 
Russell, and that he'd better be cool to him?” 

“And have him turn the man down if it really 
comes to a proposal!” 

“That won't matter,” I told her. “We’ll prob- 
ably elope anyhow.” 

Mother opposed that vigorously. She said that 
no matter how good a match it was, there was al- 
ways something queer about an elopement. And 
anyhow she'd been giving wedding gifts for years 
and it was time something came in instead of going 
out. It was the only point we differed on. 

Well, father did his best to queer things that very 
day. All the way through I played in hard luck. 
Just when things were going right something hap- 
pened. 

I met Russell at the Art Gallery. It was a cold 
day, but I left my muff at home. It was 


AFFINITIES 


82 

about time for the coat-pocket business. I couldn’t 
afford to wait, for one or two of the girls were wear- 
ing their hair like mine, and Td heard that Toots 
Warrington had gone to Russell and asked him how 
he liked kindergartening. Bessie Willing, who told 
me, said that Russell’s reply was: 

“It’s rather pleasant. I’m reversing things. In- 
stead of going from the cradle to the grave, I’m go- 
ing from the grave to the cradle.” 

I don’t believe he said it. In the first place, he 
is too polite. In the second place, he is too stupid. 
But as Toots is not young he may have thought of it. 

He was waiting near a heater, and we sat down 
together. I shivered. 

“Cold, honey he asked. 

“Hands are cold. Do you mind if I put one in 
your coat pocket^” 

Did he mind? He did not. He was very polite 
at first and emptied the pocket of various things, in- 
cluding a letter which he mentioned casually was a 
bill. But after a moment he slid his hand in on 
top of mine. 

“You’re a wonderful young person,” he said, “and 
you’ve got me going.” 

Then he squeezed the hand until it hurt. Sud- 
denly he looked up. 

“Great Scott!” he said. “There’s Henry!” 

Of course it was Henry. He had brought a cata^ 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


83 


logue and was going painstakingly from one picture 
to another. He did not see us at first, and we had 
time to stand up and be looking at a landscape when 
he got to us. He looked moderately surprised and 
waited to mark something in the catalogue before 
he joined us. 

“Bully show, isn’t it^” he said cheerfully. “Never 
saw so many good ’uns. Well, what are you chil- 
dren up to?” 

“Dropped in to get warm,” said Russell. And 
I was going to add something, but Henry’s interest 
in us had passed evidently. He marked another 
cross in the catalogue and went on, with the light 
shining on his red hair and his soul clearly as up- 
lifted as his chin. 

“You needn’t worry about Henry,” I said. “He’s 
a friend of the family, and I’ll just call him up and 
tell him not to say anything.” 

“I used to think he was fond of you.” 

“That’s all over,” I said casually. “It was just 
one of the things that comes and goes. Like this 
little — acquaintance of ours.” 

“What do you mean, goes?” he demanded almost 
fiercely. 

“They always do, don’t they? Awfully pleasant 
things don’t last. And we can’t go on meeting in- 
definitely. Some one will tell father, and then where 
will I be?” 


AFFINITIES 


84 

That was a wrong move about father. 

‘That reminds me,” he said. “Are you sure your 
father dislikes me such a lot?” 

“Don't let’s talk about it,” I said, and closed my 
eyes. 

“Because I met him to-day, and he nearly fell on 
my neck and hugged me.” 

Can you beat that? I was stunned. 

“The more he detests people,” I managed finally, 
“the more polite he is.” 

Then I took off my gloves and fell to rubbing 
the fingers of my left hand. And he moved round 
and put it in the other coat pocket without a word, 
with his hand over it, and the danger was past, 
for the time anyhow. 

Mother came round that evening about the elope- 
ment. 

“Perhaps you are right, Katherine,” she said. “A 
lot of people will send things when the announce- 
ment cards go out. And Russell can afford to buy 
you anything you want anyhow.” 

Madge was a nuisance all that week. She was 
always at the telephone first when it rang, and I 
did not like her tone when she said it was Herschen- 
rother again. Once I could have sworn that I saw 
her following me, but she ducked into a shop when 
I turned round. 

She had transferred her affections to Henry, and 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


85 


he took her to a cotillon or two for the school set, 
and played round with the youngsters generally, and 
showed her a sweet time, as she said. 

But once when mother and I had been shut in my 
room, going over my clothes and making notes of 
what I would take with me, if the thing came to an 
elopement — I was pretty sure by that time, and we 
planned a sort of week-end outfit without riding 
things — I opened the door suddenly, and Madge was 
just outside. 

Well, we got her back to school finally, and 
Henry took her to the train. I remember mother’s 
watching them as they got into the car together. 

“That wouldn’t be so bad for Madge,” she said 
reflectively. “She is bound to marry badly anyhow, 
she’s so impulsive, and Henry would be a good 
counterweight. He is very dependable.” 

“She would make him most unhappy,” I said. 
“Probably Henry would be all right for Madge, but 
how about Madge for Henry?” 

Mother looked at me and said nothing. 

Russell proposed at the end of the next week, 
and I refused. He proposed in a movie. We’d had 
to give up the Art Galleiy^ because Henry was al- 
ways taking people through it. He took Toots one 
afternoon, and that finished us. 

There was a little talk that Henry and Toots 
were getting rather thick. The army man’s leave 


AFFINITIES 


86 

was up, and she had to have somebody. There was 
probably something to it. We saw them in the 
park one afternoon sitting on a bench, and I 
could have sworn she had her hand in his coat 
pocket ! 

Well, I refused Russell. 

“Why*?’’ he said. “You’re crazy about me, and 
you know it.” 

“I’m not going to marry a past,” I said. “You’d 
make me horribly unhappy.” 

“I’d never bore you, that’s one thing.” 

“No, but you might find me dull.” 

“Dull ! Darling girl, I’ve never had as interest- 
ing a month in my life.” 

I said nothing. After a minute : 

“Do you remember the first night we really met*?” 

“In the pantry. Yes.” 

“Do you remember what you said about being 
cold? And I told you it was a question of the right 
man?” 

I remembered. 

“Well, I’m the man,” he said triumphantly. 
“Don’t fool yourself — that little hand of yours slips 
into my coat pocket as if it belonged there. And it 
does.” 

He pulled it out and kissed it. Luckily the the- 
atre was dark. 

Two days later I consented to elope with him. 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


87 


Mother was quite delirious when I told her. She 
came over and kissed my cheek. 

“You’ve never disappointed me, Kit, never,” she 
said. “If only Madge would do as well.” 

She sighed. 

“Madge will probably marry for love, and be 
happy,” I snapped. It was a silly speech. I haven’t 
an idea why I made it. 

“And shabby,” said mother. 

I turned on her sharply. The strain of the last 
month was over, and I dare say I went to pieces. 

“It’s all very well for you to be satisfied,” I cried. 
“You’re not going to marry Russell Hill, and have 
him call you ‘girlie,’ and see his hat move every time 
he raises his eyebrows. I am.” 

She went out very stiffly, and sent her maid in 
with hot tea. 

I was out at a theatre party that night, and 
mother was in my room when I got back. 

“I want to talk to you, Katherine,” she said, “I’ve 
been uneasy all evening.” 

“If you mean about what I said this afternoon, 
please forget it, mother. I was tired and nervous. 
I didn’t mean it.” 

“Not that. I don’t want any mistake about this 
elopement. Now and then those things have a way 
of going wrong. Quite often there is trouble about a 
license or a minister.” 


AFFINITIES 


88 

“Send father ahead,” I said flippantly. 

“Not father. But some one really ought to look 
after things. Russell is not the sort to arrange any- 
thing in advance. I thought perhaps Henry — ” 

“Henry !” 

“He is reliable,” said mother. “And he has your 
well-being at heart. He is more like a brother than 
a good many brothers I know.” 

I could scream my head off when I think of it 
now. For we fixed on Henry, and I telephoned him 
to come round to dinner. He seemed rather sur- 
prised when he heard my voice. 

“Honestly, Kit,” he said, “do you want me?” 

“I want you to do something for me.” 

“Then Til come. That’s all that’s necessary.” 

But it wasn’t as easy as it had promised after all. 
There’s something so downright about Henry. He 
was standing in front of the library fire after dinner 
when I told him. 

“Henry,” I said, “I am going to be married.” 

He did not say anything at first. Then: 

“Well?” he asked. 

“Do you know to whom?” 

“Yes.” 

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” 

“I don’t know what I can say,” he said very 
slowly and carefully. “If each of you cares a lot, 
that’s all there is to it, isn’t it? The point is, ©f 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


89 


course, why you are doing it. If it’s to cut out some- 
body else, or to get money or anything like that. I’m 
not going to wish you happiness, because you won’t 
deserve it. If you’re in love with him, that’s dif- 
ferent.” 

Did you ever try to tell a lie to a red-headed young 
man with blue eyes? It’s extremely difficult. 

‘‘I’m not in love with him, Henry,” I said. I 
was astounded to hear myself saying it. 

“Then you’re giving him a crooked deal.” 

“He’s not in love with me either. So that’s 
even.” 

“Then why ” 

“Because he thinks he can’t have me,” I said. 
“I’m marrying him because he’s the most marriage- 
able man I know, and I have to marry money. I’ve 
been raised for that. And he’s marrying me because 
I’m the only girl whose people didn’t fling her at 
him.” 

“Then I wish you joy of each other!” he said 
hoarsely, and slammed out of the room and out of 
the house. 

I haven’t the faintest idea what came over me 
that night. I went upstairs and cried my eyes out. 

A few days later, after a round of luncheons, din- 
ners and dances until I was half dead, I had a free 
evening. The elopement had been set for Friday, 
and it was Wednesday. Mother and father were 


90 AFFINITIES 

out, and I went downstairs for a book. I had got 
it and was just going out when I saw Henry’s red 
head over the back of the leather chair by the hre. 

I went over. He was not reading. He was just 
sitting, his long legs stretched out in front of him. 

“Hello, Kit,” he said calmly. “I knew this was 
an off night. Sit down.” 

I sat down, rather suspicious of his manner. 
Henry can’t dissemble. 

“About the other night,” he said, “I was taken by 
surprise. Just forget it. Kit. Now, when are you 
going to pull this thing off?” 

I told him, and where. 

“Russell made any arrangements?” 

“I haven’t asked.” 

“Probably not. He’ll expect to get out of the 
train and find a license and a preacher on the plat- 
form. I’d better be best man, and go down there 
a day before to fix things.” 

Well, it wasn’t flattering to see him so eager to 
get me married. There had been a time when I 
thought — However — 

“Oh!” I said. 

“Better do it right while you’re about it,” he 
said. “You might give me one of your rings, and 
I’ll order a wedding ring. Platinum or gold?” 

“Platinum,” I said feebly. 

“Anything inside?” 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


91 


“The — ^the date, I suppose.’’ 

“No initials or anything like that*?” 

I roused from a sort of stupor of astonishment. 

“I like a very narrow ring,” I said. “There won’t 
be room for much inside. The date will do. But 
I’m sure that Russell ” 

“All right if he does. Perhaps I’d better not put 
in the date. Then, if he takes one along, I can re- 
turn this and have it credited to him.” 

“You’re very thoughtful.” 

“Not at all,” he said with the first atom of feel- 
ing he’d shown. “I don’t approve of anything about 
this business; but if it’s going to happen, it’s going 
to happen right !” 

He got up and stood in front of the fire. 

“The thing to be sure of. Kit,” he said soberly, 
“is that you don’t love any one else. It’s bad 
enough as it is, but that would be worse.” 

“I wouldn’t dare to be in love with any one who 
wasn’t eligible,” I said, not looking at him. “I’ve 
been raised for just what I’m doing. I’m fulfilling 
my destiny.” 

“There’s nobody else, then^” 

“Who could there be*?” 

“That’s twice I’ve asked you a perfectly simple 
question. Kit, and you have evaded it. The plain 
truth, of course, is that you are in love, absolutely 
single-heartedl}'^ in love, but not with Russell.” 


AFFINITIES 


“Then who*?” I demanded sharply. 

“With yourself/’ he said, and picked up his hat 
and went out. 


IV 

Russell and I eloped on a Friday morning. 
Mother and I packed my dressing case and a bag, 
and I gave her an itemized list of what was to be 
sent on in my trunk when I wired for it. She was 
greatly relieved to know that Henry was looking 
after things, especially the ring. 

“I do hope he gets a narrow one,” she said. 
“Wedding rings are nonsense at any time. You 
can never wear other rings with them. But if it is 
platinum you can have it set with diamonds later 
on.” 

I think she was disappointed when I refused to 
leave a note on my dressing table for her. 

“That’s out of date, mother,” I said. “You 
needn’t know anything until you get my wire that 
it’s over. Then you can call up the newspapers and 
deny it. That’s the best way to let them know.” 

Then she went out, per agreement, after kissing 
me good-by, and I called a taxicab and eloped. 

Did you ever have a day when things went wrong 
with you and when you knew that the fault was 
somewhere in you*? Well, that was that sort of day. 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


93 


The minute I was in the taxicab I was uncomfor- 
table. All at once I didn’t want to be married. I 
hoped Russell would miss the train, and I could go 
back home and be a spinster lady and be on com- 
mittees. 

But he did not miss the train. He was there, 
waiting. He had on a very ugly necktie and an 
English ulster that made his chest dish in, although 
he has a good figure. 

‘Hello, girlie,” he said. “Stuff all here*? Any 
excitement at home? No? Nice work.” 

My lips felt stiff. 

“Train’s waiting,” he said. “What do you think 
of Henry? Big lift, that is. I’ve never been mar- 
ried before. I’m fairly twittering.” 

We got into the train. There was no Pullman. 
Not that it mattered, but it helped to upset me. I 
hated eloping in a day coach. And a woman with 
a market basket sat across the aisle, and the legs of 
a chicken stuck out. 

Russell squeezed into the seat beside me. 

“Jove, this is great!” he said. “Aren’t you going 
to put your hand in my coat pocket, honey?” 

Quite suddenly I said: 

“I don’t want to.” 

He drew away a trifle. 

“You’re nervous,” he said. “So am I, for that 
matter. D’you mind if I go and smoke?” 


AFFINITIES 


I didn’t mind. I thought if I had to see that 
ulster dishing in and that tie another minute I’d go 
crazy. 

I grew calmer when he had gone. Here was the 
thing I had worked so hard for, mine at last. I 
thought of Toots, and her face when she saw the 
papers. I thought of Ellie Clavering and Bessie 
Willing and Margaret North and the others, with 
their earrings and the imitation of Toots and all 
the rest of it. I felt rather better. When Russell 
came back I could even smile at him. 

“I wish I could have a cigarette,” I said. 

He turned and put a hand over mine. 

“You’re going to cut that out, you know, girlie,” 
he said. “I can’t have my wife smoking.” 

Yes, that’s what he said. For ten years he’d sent 
girls cigarettes and offered them cigarettes and sat 
with them in comers while they smoked cigarettes. 
But he didn’t want his wife smoking. Wasn’t it 
typical ? 

Oh, well, I didn’t care. I’d do as I liked once we 
were married. Then about half way, without the 
slightest warning, I knew I couldn’t marry him. 
Marry him ! Why, I didn’t even like him. And the 
way he made me sit with my hand in his coat pocket 
was sickening. 

“I don’t think I’ll marry you after all,” I said. 
“Eh^ What?” 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 


95 


“I said Fve changed my mind. I won’t do it.” 

“I haven’t changed mine.” 

“I’m not really in love with you.” 

“You’re nervous,” he said calmly. “Go ahead 
and talk. It’s the new psychology. Never bury 
your worries. Talk ’em out and get rid of ’em.” 

“I was never forbidden to see you.” 

“All right,” he said contentedly. “I knew that 
all along. What else*?” 

“Even my hand in your coat pocket is a trick.” 

“Sure it is, but it’s a nice trick. What else^” 

“I’m not going to marry you.” 

“Oh, yes, you are. You can’t very well go back, 
can you*? Mother’s probably called up the papers 
already.” 

Then he sat up and looked at me. 

“Now, look here, young lady,” he said. “I’m 
no idiot. I knew before you were born some of the 
stunts you pulled. I’ve never been fooled for a 
minute about them. But you’re going to marry me. 
Why*? Because I’m crazy about you. That’s why. 
And that’s enough.” 

It was terrible. And there was no way out, none. 
The train rumbled on. There was a tunnel and he 
kissed me. It was a short tunnel. 

Somebody behind chuckled. 

And then at last it was over, and we were there, 
and I was being led like a sheep to the altar, and 


AFFINITIES 


96 

Henry was on the platform with ring and license 
and all the implements of sacrifice. 

“Behold,” said Russell from the train platform, 
“the family friend is on hand. Whose idea was 
Henry, anyhow*? His or yours or mother’s*?” 

Henry came up. He looked cheerful enough, al- 
though I fancied he was pale. I liked his necktie. 
I always liked Henry’s ties. 

“Hello,” he said. “Everything here? Where’s 
your luggage?” 

“Baggage car,” said Russell. “Look after Kit, 
Henry, will you? I’ll see to it.” 

He hadn’t taken two steps before Henry had 
clutched my arm. 

“I knew you wouldn’t,” he said. “I can see it 
in your face.” 

“Henry!” I gasped. “What am I to do?” 

“You’re to marry me,” he said in a sort of fierce 
whisper. “Don’t stop to argue. I’ve always meant 
to marry you. Quick, into the taxi !” 

That’s all I remember just then, except hearing 
him say he had the license and the ring, and an up- 
roar from where we’d left Russell and all his money 
on the platform. 

“Wha-what sort of license?” I asked, with my 
teeth chattering from pure fright. “If it’s in Rus- 
sell’s name it’s not good, is it?” 

“It’s in my name,” said Henry, grimly. 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 97 

“But the ring — that’s Russell’s.” 

“Not at all,” said Henry, still without an atom 
of tenderness. “I bought it and paid for it. It’s 
got "From H. to K.’ inside of it. Very small,” he 
added hastily. “It’s quite narrow, as you requested.” 

“Henry,” I said, sitting up stiffly, “what would 
I have done if you hadn’t been round*?” 

“You needn’t worry about that. After this I’ll 
always be round. I don’t intend to be underfoot,” 
he volunteered, ""but I’ll be within call. As a mat- 
ter of fact,” he added, ""I’ve been within call prac- 
tically all of the last month. It’s taken a lot of 
time.” 

If only he had said something agreeable or yield- 
ing, or looked anything but grim and efficient, I 
could have stood it. But, there we were, on our 
way to be married, and he looked as sentimental as 
a piano tuner. 

All at once it came over me that it was Henry, it 
always had been Henry, it always would be Henry. 
And he looked calm and altruistic and rather hollow 
round his eyes. 

""If you’re only doing this to save me,” I said, 
""you needn’t, you know. I can go home, even if 
the papers have got it.” 

‘"Don’t make me any more nervous than I am. 
Kit,” he said. “I’m about evenly divided as to 


AFFINITIES 


98 

beating you up or kissing you. Any extra strain, and 
it’s one or the other.” 

“Don’t beat me, Henry.” 

“I’m damnably poor, Kit,” he said. 

For reply I slid my hand into his coat pocket. 
He melted quite suddenly after that, and put his 
arms round me. I knew I was being a fool but I 
was idiotically happy. 

“Henry,” I said, “do you know that verse in the 
Bible, that as a partridge sits on eggs and fails to 
hatch them, so too the person who gets riches with- 
out deserving them?” 

He held me off and looked at me as if he sus- 
pected my sanity. Then he kissed me. 

V 

Mother has never really forgiven me. It put her 
in so awfully wrong, of course. For she called up 
the newspapers, and said that if they received a re- 
port that I had eloped with Mr. Russell Hill, they 
were please to deny it. 

Of course they sent reporters everywhere at once. 
And they traced me to the station. About the time 
mother was reading the headlines “Society Bud and 
Well-Known Clubman Elope,” and wiring Madge, 
she got Henry’s telegram. 

She thinks I threw away the chance of a lifetime. 


THE FAMILY FRIEND 99 

But since the day before yesterday Pve been won- 
dering. I was going over Henry's old suits, get- 
ting them ready to be cleaned and pressed. We 
have to be very economical. And in a pocket I came 
across this letter: 

“Dear Boy: We have decided on the eleven- 
o’clock train. For the love of Mike don’t miss meet- 
ing it ! And after thinking it over carefully, you’re 
right. When I go to see after the luggage will be 
the best time. Yours, 


“Russell.” 



CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 



CLAKVS LITTLE ESCAPADE 


T he plain truth is/’ said Carrie Smith, “that, 
no matter how happy two people may be to- 
gether, the time cc»nes when they are bored to death 
with each other.” 

Nobody said anything. It was true and we knew 
it. Ida Elliott put down the scarf she was knitting 
for the Belgians and looked down over the hill to 
where a lot of husbands were playing in the swim- 
ming pool. 

“It isn’t just a matter of being bored, you know, 
Carrie,” she said. “A good many of us have made 
mistakes.” Then she sighed. Ida is not really un- 
happy, but she likes to think she is. 

NcHie of the rest made any comment. But one 
or two of the other girls put down their knitting 
and looked out over the hills. 

“I hope you don’t mind my saying it, Clara,” 
Carrie said, turning to me; “but it’s a mistake to 
have a week-end party like this. Last night when 
I played pool with your Bill after the rest of you 
had gone upstairs, Wallie refused to speak to me 
when I went to bed. He’s still sulking.” 

I am not sensitive ; but when they everyone turned 

103 


104 


AFFINITIES 


on me and said it was a beautiful party, but why, 
in heaven's name, had I asked only husbands and 
not one extra man, it made me a trifle hot. 

‘As most of us see our husbands only during week- 
ends," I said tartly, “I should think this sort of fam- 
ily reunion would be good for us.” 

Carrie sniffed. 

“See them !" she snapped. “They've been a part 
of the landscape since we came, and that’s all. Either 
they’re in the pool, or playing clock golf, or making 
caricatures of themselves on the tennis court. A good 
photograph would be as comforting, and wouldn’t 
sulk.” 

Well, the whole thing really started from that. I 
made up my mind, somehow or other, to even up 
with them. I’d planned a really nice party, and 
even if they were bored they might have had the 
politeness to conceal it. 

Even now, badly as things turned out, I maintain 
that the idea was a good one. I had a bad time. I’ll 
admit that. But the rest of them were pretty un- 
happy for a while. The only thing I can’t quite for- 
give is that Bill — but that comes later on. 

There had been very little doing all spring. Every- 
body was poor, and laying up extra motors, and try- 
ing to side-step appeals for Eastern relief, and hiding 
dressmakers’ bills. There were hardly any dividends 
at all, and what with the styles completely changing 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 105 


from wide skirts to narrow ones, so that not a thing 
from last year would do, and the men talking noth- 
ing but retrenchment and staying at the table hours 
after every dinner party, fighting the war over again, 
while we sat and knitted, I never remember a drear- 
ier spring. 

“Although,” Carrie Smith said with truth, “the 
knitting’s rather good for us. No woman can en- 
joy a cigarette and knit at the same time.” 

The craze for dancing was dying away, too, and 
nothing came along to take its place. The debutantes 
were playing tennis, but no woman over twenty-two 
should ever play tennis, so most of us were out of 
that. Anyhow it’s violent. And bridge, for any- 
thing worth while, was apt to be too expensive. 

But to go back. 

We sat and knitted and yawned, and the hus- 
bands put on dressing gowns and ambled up the hill 
and round to the shower baths in the basement. I 
looked at Bill. Bill is my husband and I’m fond 
of Bill. But there are times when he gets on my 
nerves. He has a faded old bathrobe that saw him 
through college and his honeymoon, and that he still 
refuses to part with, and he had it on. 

It was rather short, and Bill’s legs, though service- 
able, are not beautiful. 

He waved his hand to me. 

“If you’d do a little of that sort of thing, Clara,” 


AFFINITIES 


106 

he called, “you wouldn’t need to have the fat rubbed 
off you by an expensive masseuse.” 

“Quite a typical husbandly speech!” said Carrie 
Smith. 

“Do they ever think of anything but exercise and 
expense?” 

Well, the men bathed and dressed and had whisky- 
and-sodas, and came out patronisingly and joined us 
at tea on the terrace. But inside of ten minutes they 
were in a group round the ball news and the financial 
page of the evening papers, and we were alone again. 

Carrie Smith came over and sat down beside me, 
with her eyes narrowed to a slit. 

“I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, Clara,” she 
said, “but you see what I mean. They’re not inter- 
ested in us. We manage their houses and bring up 
their children. That’s all.” 

As Carrie was the only one who had any chil- 
dren, and as they were being reared by a trained 
nurse and a governess, and the baby yelled like an 
Apache if Carrie went near him, her air of virtue 
was rather out of place. However : 

“What would you recommend?” I asked wearily. 
“They’re all alike, aren’t they?” 

“Not all.” Her eyes were still narrowed. And 
at that moment Wallie Smith came over and threw 
an envelope into her lap. 

“It came to the office by mistake,” he said grimly. 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 107 


“What made you have your necklace reset when 
Tm practically bankrupt*?” 

“I bought hardly any new stones,” she flashed at 
him. “Anyhow, I intend to be decently clothed. 
Tear it up; nobody’s paying any bills.” 

He stalked away, and Carrie looked at me. 

“No,” she said slowly, “they are not all alike. 
Thank heaven there are a few men who don’t hoist 
the dollar mark as a flag. Clara, do you remember 
Harry Delaney*?” 

I looked at Carrie. 

A little spot of red had come into each of her 
cheeks, and her eyes, mere slits by now, were fixed 
on the far-away hills. 

She and Harry had been engaged years ago, and 
she threw him over because of his jealous nature. 
But she seemed to have forgotten that. 

“Of course,” I said, rather startled. 

“He was a dear. Sometimes I think he was the 
most generous soul in the world. I cannot imagine 
his fussing about a necklace, or sulking for hours 
over a bit of innocent pleasure like my playing a 
game of pool after a lot of sleepyheads had gone to 
bed.” 

“What time did you and Bill go upstairs?” 

“Something after two. We got tired of playing 
and sat out here and talked. I knew you wouldn’t 
mind, Clara. You’ve got too much sense. Surely 


AFFINITIES 


108 

a woman ought to be allowed friends, even if she is 
married/’ 

“Oh, friends!” I retorted. “If she’s going to keep 
her husband a friend she’s got her hands full. Cer- 
tainly I’m not jealous of you and Bill, Carrie. But 
it’s not friends most of us want, if you’re after the 
truth. We want passionate but perfectly respecta- 
ble, commandment-keeping lovers!” 

Carrie laughed, but her colour died down. 

“How silly you are !” she said, and got up. “May- 
be we’d like to feel that we’re not clear out of the 
game, but that’s all. We’re a little tired of being 
taken for granted. I don’t want a lover; I want 
amusement, and if I’d married Harry Delaney I’d 
have had it.” 

“If you’d married him he would have been down 
there at the pool, showing off like a goldfish in a 
bowl, the same as the others.” 

“He would not. He can’t swim,” said Carrie, 
and sauntered away. Somehow I got the impression 
that she had been sounding me, and had got what she 
wanted. She looked very handsome that night, and 
wore the necklace. Someone commented on it at 
dinner, and Wallie glared across at it. 

“It isn’t paid for,” he said, “and as far as I can 
see, it never will be.” 

Of course, even among old friends, that was going 
rather far. 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 109 


Well, the usual thing happened after dinner. The 
men smoked and argued, and we sat on the terrace 
and yawned. When they did come out it was to 
say that golf and swimming had made them sleepy, 
and Jim Elliott went asleep in his chair. Carrie 
said very little, except once to lean over and ask me 
if I remembered the name of the man Alice Warring- 
ton had thrown over for Ted. When I told her she 
settled back into silence again. 

The next morning all the husbands were up early 
and off t» the club for a Sunday’s golfing. At ten 
o’clock a note came in on my breakfast tray from 
Carrie. ^ 

“Slip on something and come to my room,” it 
said. 

When I got there Ida and Alice Warrington were 
there already, and Carrie was sitting up in bed, with 
the same spots of colour I’d seen before. I curled up 
on the bed with my hands round my knees. 

“Go to it, Carrie,” I said. “If it’s church, it’s 
too late. If it’s a picnic, it looks like rain.” 

“Close the door, Ida,” said Carrie. “Girls, I’m 
getting pretty tired of this.” 

“Of what*?” 

“Of dragging the matrimonial ball and chain 
wherever I go, and having to hear it clank and swear 
and sulk, and — all the rest. I’m tired, and so are 
all of you. Only I’m more honest.” 


110 


AFFINITIES 


“It’s all rather a mess,” Ida said languidly. “But 
divorce is a mess too. And, anyhow, what’s the use 
of changing^ Just as one gets to know a man’s pet 
stories, and needn’t pretend to laugh at them any 
more, why take on a new bunch of stories — or 
habits 

“The truth is,” said Carrie, ignoring her, “that 
they have all the good times. They don’t have to 
look pretty. Their clothes last forever. And they’re 
utterly selfish socially. You girls know how much 
they dance with the married women when there are 
any debutantes about.” 

We knew. 

“The thing to do,” said Carrie, “is to bring them 
back to a sense of obligation. They’ve got us.- We 
stay put. They take us to parties and get up a table 
of bridge for us, and go off to a corner with a chit 
just out of school, or dance through three handker- 
chiefs and two collars, and grumble at paying our 
bridge losses. Or else they stay at home, and noth- 
ing short of a high explosive would get them out 
of their chairs.” 

“Destructive criticism,” said Alice Warrington, 
“never gets anywhere. We agree with you. There’s 
no discussion. Are you recommending the high ex- 
plosive?” 

“I am,” said Carrie calmly. “I propose to wake 
them up, and to have a good time doing it.” 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 111 


Well, as it turned out, it was I who wakened them 
up, and nobody had a very good time about it. 

‘‘There’s just one man a husband is always jealous 
of,” Carrie went on, and her eyes were slitted as 
usual. “That’s the man his wife could have married 
and didn’t.” 

I expect I coloured, for Bill has always been in- 
sanely jealous of Roger Waite, although honestly I 
never really cared for Roger. We used to have good 
times together, of course. You know. 

Carrie’s plan came out by degrees. 

“It will serve two purposes,” she said. “It will 
bring the men to a sense of responsibility, and stop 
this silly nonsense about bills and all that sort of 
thing. And it will be rather fun. It’s a sin to drop 
old friends. Does Wallie drop his? Not so you 
could notice it. Every time I’m out of town he 
lives at Grace Bamabee’s.” 

Carrie had asked us all to spend the next week- 
end with her, but the husbands were going to New 
York for the polo game and she had called the party 
off. But now it was on again. 

“Do you girls remember the house party I had 
when Wallie was in Cuba, before we were engaged? 
We had a gorgeous time. I’m going to repeat it. 
It’s silly to say lightning doesn’t strike twice in the 
same place. Of course it does, if one doesn t use 
lightning rods. Peter Arundel for Alice, and Roger 


112 AFFINITIES 

for you, Clara. Ida, you were in Europe, but we’ll 
let you in. Who’ll you have"?” 

“Only one?” asked Ida. 

“Only one.” 

Ida chose Wilbur Bayne, and Carrie wrote the 
notes right there in bed, with a pillow for a desk, 
and got ink on my best linen sheets. 

“I’m sorry I never thought of it before,” she said. 
“The house party is bound to be fun, and if it turns 
out well we’ll do it regularly. I’ll ask in a few 
people for dancing Saturday night, but we’ll keep 
Sunday for ourselves. We’ll have a deliciously sen- 
timental day.” 

She sat back and threw out her arms. 

“Good Lord,” she said, “I’m just ripe for a bit 
of sentiment. I want about forty-eight hours with- 
out bills or butlers or bridge. I’m going to send my 
diamond necklace to a safe deposit, and get out my 
debutante pearls, and have the wave washed out of 
my hair, and fill in the necks of one or two gowns. 
I warn you fairly, there won’t be a cigarette for any 
of you.” 

When I left them they were already talking 
clothes, and Carrie had a hand glass and was look- 
ing at herself intently in it. 

“I’ve changed, of course,” she sighed. “One can’t 
have two children and not show the wear and tear 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 113 

of maternity. I could take off five pounds by going 
on a milk diet. I think I will.” 

She went on the diet at luncheon that day, and 
Wallie told her that if she would cut out heavy din- 
ners and wine her stomach would be her friend, not 
her enemy. She glanced at me, but I ignored her. 
Somehow I was feeling blue. 

The week-end had not been a success, and the girls 
had not been slow to tell me about it. The very 
eagerness with which they planned for the next 
week told me what a failure Fd had. Even then the 
idea of getting even somehow with Carrie was in 
the back of my mind. 

The men did some trap shooting that afternoon, 
and during dinner Jim started a discussion about put- 
ting women on a clothes allowance and making them 
keep within it. 

“I can systematise my business,” he said, ‘'but 
I can’t systematise my home. Fm spending more 
now than Fm getting out of the mill.” 

Wallie Smith came up to scratch about that time 
by saying that his mother raised him with the assis- 
tance of a nursemaid, and no governess and trained 
nurse nonsense. 

“That is why I insist on a trained nurse and a 
governess,” said Carrie coldly, and took another sip 
of milk. 


AFFINITIES 


114 

They went home that night, and Bill, having seen 
them into the motors, came up on the terrace. 

“Bully party, old dear,” he said enthusiastically. 
“Have ’em often, won’t you^” 

He sat down near me and put a hand over mine. 
All at once I was sorry I’d accepted Carrie’s invita- 
tion. Not that there would be any harm in seeing 
Roger again, but because Bill wouldn’t like it. The 
touch of his warm hand on mine, the quiet of the 
early summer night after the noise that had gone be- 
fore, the scent of the honeysuckle over the pergola, 
all combined to soften me. 

“I’m glad you had a good time. Bill,” I said after 
a little silence. “Fm afraid the girls didn’t enjoy 
it much. You men were either golfing or swimming 
or shooting, and there wasn’t much to do but talk.” 

Bill said nothing. I thought he might be resent- 
ful, and I was in a softened mood. 

“I didn’t really mind your staying downstairs the 
other night with Carrie,” I said. “Bill, do smell the 
honeysuckle. Doesn’t it remind you of the night 
you asked me to marry you 

Still Bill said nothing. I leaned over and looked 
at him. As usual he was asleep. 

About the middle of the week Roger Waite called 
me up. We did not often meet — two or three times 
in the winter at a ball, or once in a season at a din- 
ner. Ida Elliott always said he avoided me because 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 115 

it hurt him to see me. We had been rather sentimen- 
tal. He would dance once with me, saying very little, 
and go away as soon as he decently could directly the 
dance was over. Sometimes I had thought that it 
pleased him to fancy himself still in love with me, 
and it’s perfectly true that he showed no signs of 
marrying. It was rather the thing for the debutan- 
tes to go crazy about Roger. He had an air of 
knowing such a lot and keeping it from them. 

“Why don’t you keep him around Ida asked 
me once. “He’s so ornamental. Pm not strong for 
tame cats, but I wouldn’t mind Roger on the hearth- 
rug myself.” 

But up to this time I’d never really wanted any- 
body on the hearthrug but Bill. If I do say it, I 
was a perfectly contented wife until the time Carrie 
Smith made her historic effort to revive the past. 
“Let sleeping dogs lie” is my motto now — and tame 
cats too. 

Well, Roger called me up, and there was the little 
thrill in his voice that I used to think he kept for me. 
I know better now. 

“What’s this about going out to Carrie Smith’s?” 
he said over the phone. 

“That’s all,” I replied. “You’re invited and I’m 
going.” 

“O !” said Roger. And waited a moment. Then : 


AFFINITIES 


116 

“I was going on to the polo/’ he said, “but of 
course — What’s wrong with Bill and polo"?” 

“He’s going.” 

“Oh!” said Roger. “Well, then, I think I’ll go 
to Carrie’s. It sounds too good to be true — you, and 
no scowling husband in the offing !” 

“It’s — it’s rather a long time since you and I had 
a real talk.” 

“Too long,” said Roger. “Too long by about 
three years.” 

That afternoon he sent me a great box of flowers. 
My conscience was troubling me rather, so I sent 
them down to the dinner table. Whatever happened 
I was not going to lie about them. 

But Bill only frowned. 

“I’ve just paid a florist’s bill of two hundred dol- 
lars,” he grumbled. “Cut out the American beau- 
ties, old dear.” 

It was not his tone that made me angry. It was 
his calm assumption that I had bought the things. 
As if no one would think of sending me flowers ! 

“If you would stop sending orchids to silly de- 
butantes when they come out,” I snapped, “there 
would be no such florist’s bills.” 

One way or another Bill got on my nerves that 
week. He brought Wallie Smith home one night to 
dinner, and Wallie got on my nerves too. I could 
remember, when Wallie and Carrie were engaged 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 117 


and we were just married, how he used to come and 
talk us black in the face about Carrie. 

“How’s Carrie, Wallie‘?” I said during the soup. 

“She’s all right,” he replied, and changed the 
subject. But later in the evening, while Bill was 
walking on the lawn with a cigar, he broke out for 
fair. 

“Carrie’s on a milk diet,” he said apropos of noth- 
ing. “If she stays on it another week I’m going to 
Colorado. She’s positively brutal, and she hasn’t 
ordered a real dinner for anybody for a week.” 

“Really!” I said. 

He got up and towered over me. 

“Look here, Clara,” he said; “you’re a sensible 
woman. Am I fat^ Am I bald^? Am I a dodder- 
ing and toothless venerable? To hear Carrie this 
past few days you’d think I need to wear overshoes 
when I go out in the grass.” 

I rather started, because I’d been looking at Bill 
at that minute and wondering if he was getting his 
feet wet. He had only pumps on. 

“It isn’t only that she’s brutal,” he said, “she has 
soft moments when she mothers me. Confound it> 
I don’t want to be mothered ! She’s taken off eight 
pounds,” he went on gloomily. “And that isn’t the 
worst.” He lowered his voice. “I found her cry- 
ing over some old letters the other day. She isn’t 
happy, Clara. You know she could have married 


AFFINITIES 


118 

a lot of fellows. She was the most popular girl I 
ever knew.’’ 

Well, rd known Carrie longer than he had, and 
of course a lot of men used to hang round her house 
because there was always something to do. But I’d 
never known that such a lot of them made love to 
Carrie or wanted to marry her. She was clever 
enough to hesitate over Wallie, but, believe me, she 
knew she had him cinched before she ran any risk. 
However : 

‘I’m sure you’ve tried to make her happy,” I 
said. “But of course she was awfully popular.” 

I’m not so very keen about Carrie, but the way I 
felt that week, when it was a question between a hus- 
band and a wife, I was for the wife. “Of course,” 
I said as Bill came within hearing distance, “it’s not 
easy, when one’s had a lot of attention, to settle 
down to one man, especially if the man is consider- 
ably older and — and settled.” 

That was a wrong move, as it turned out. For 
Bill, who never says much, got quieter than ever, 
and announced, just before he went to bed, that he’d 
given up the polo game. I was furious. I’d had 
one or two simple little frocks run up for Carrie’s 
party, and by the greatest sort of luck I’d happened 
on a piece of flowered lawn almost exactly like one 
Roger used to be crazy about. 

For twenty-four hours things hung in the balance. 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 119 


Bill has a hideous way of doing what he says he’ll 
do. Roger had sent more flowers — not roses this 
time, but mignonette and valley lilies, with a few 
white orchids. It looked rather bridey. It would 
have been too maddening to have Bill queer the 
whole thing at the last minute. 

But I fixed things at bridge one night by saying 
that I thought married people were always better 
off for short separations, and that I was never so 
fond of Bill as when he’d been away for a few days. 

“Polo for me !” said Bill. 

And I went out during my dummy hand and tele- 
phoned Carrie. 

I hope I have been clear about the way the thing 
began. I feel that my situation should be explained. 
For one thing, all sorts of silly stories are going 
round, and it is stupid of people to think they can- 
not ask Roger and me to the same dinners. If Bill 
would only act like a Christian, and not roar the 
moment his name is mentioned, there would be a 
chance for the thing to die out. But you know what 
Bill is. 

Well, the husbands left on Saturday morning, and 
by eleven o’clock Ida, Alice and I were all at Carrie’s. 
The change in her was simply startling. She looked 
like a willow wand. She’d put her hair low on her 
neck, and except for a touch of black on her eye- 
lashes, and of course her lips coloured, she hadn’t a 


120 


AFFINITIES 


speck of makeup on. She’d taken the pearls out of 
her ears, too, and she wore tennis clothes and flat- 
heeled shoes that made her look like a child. 

She was sending the children off in the car as we 
went up the drive. 

“They’re off to mother’s,” she said. “I’ll miss 
them frightfully, but this is a real lark, girls, and I 
can’t imagine anything more killing to romance than 
small children.” 

She kissed the top of the baby’s head, and he 
yelled like a trooper. Then the motor drove off, 
and, as Alice Warrington said, the stage was set. 

“Get your tennis things on,” Carrie said. “The 
men will be here for lunch.” 

We said with one voice that we wouldn’t play 
tennis. le was too hot. She eyed us coldly. 

“For heaven’s sake,” she said, “play up. Nobody 
asked you to play tennis. But if you are asked don’t 
say it’s too hot. Do any of the flappers at the club 
ever find it too hot to play? Sprain an ankle or 
break a racket, but don’t talk about its being too 
violent, or that you’ve given it up the last few years. 
Try to remember that for two days you’re in the 
game again, and don’t take on a handicap to begin 
with.” 

Well, things started off all right. I’ll have to ad- 
mit that, although Carrie looked a trifle queer when 
Harry Delaney, getting out of the motor that had 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 121 

brought them from the station, held out a baby’s 
rattle to her. 

‘Tound it in the car,” he said. ‘‘How are the 
youngsters anyhow^” 

“Adorable !” said Carrie, and flung the rattle into 
the house. 

Roger came straight to me and took both my 
hands. 

“Upon my word, Clara,” he said, “this is more 
luck than I ever expected again. Do you remember 
the last time we were all here together 

“Of course I do.” He was still holding my hands 
and I felt rather silly. But the others had paired 
off instantly and no one was paying any attention. 

“I was almost suicidal that last evening. You — 
you had just told me, you know.” 

I withdrew my hands. When a man is being senti- 
mental I like him to be accurately sentimental. It 
had been a full month after that house party, at a 
dance Carrie gave, that I had told him of my engage- 
ment to Bill. However, I said nothing and took a 
good look at Roger. He was wonderful. 

Why is it that married men lose their boyishness, 
and look smug and sleek and domesticated almost 
before the honeymoon is over^ Roger stood there 
with his hat in his hand and the hot noon sun shin- 
ing on him. And he hadn’t changed a particle, ex- 
cept that his hair was grey over his ears and maybe 


122 


AFFINITIES 


a bit thinner. He was just as eager, just as boyish, 
just as lean as he’d ever been. And positively he 
was handsomer than ever. 

Bill is plain. He is large and strong, of course, 
but he says himself his face must have been cut out 
with an axe. ‘‘Rugged and true,” he used to call 
himself. But lately, in spite of golf, he had put on 
weight. 

Well, to get on. 

Luncheon was gay. Everyone sat beside the per- 
son he wanted to sit beside, and said idiotic things, 
and Peter Arundel insisited on feeding Alice’s straw- 
berries to her one by one. Nobody talked bills or 
the high cost of living. Roger is a capital raconteur^ 
and we laughed until we wept over his stories. I 
told some of Bill’s stock jokes and they went with a 
hurrah. At three o’clock we were still at the table, 
and when Carrie asked the men if they wanted to 
run over to the Country Club for a couple of hours 
of golf Wilbur Bayne put the question to a vote 
and they voted “No” with a roar. 

I remember that Harry Delaney said a most satis- 
factory thing just as luncheon was over. 

“It’s what I call a real party,” he said. “After 
a man is thirty or thereabouts he finds debutantes 
still thrilling, of course, but not restful. They’re 
always wanting to go somewhere or do something. 
They’re too blooming healthy. The last week-end 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 123 


I spent I danced until 4 a. m. and was wakened at 
seven-thirty by a fair young flower throwing gravel 
through my open window and inviting me to a walk 
before breakfast!” 

“Anyone seen about the place before eleven to- 
morrow morning,” said Carrie, “will be placed un- 
der restraint. For one thing, it would make the ser- 
vants talk. They’re not used to it.” 

So far so good. Til confess freely that if they’d 
let me alone I’d never have thought of getting even. 
But you know Carrie Smith. She has no reserves. 
And she had to tell about my party and the way the 
husbands behaved. 

“Don’t glare, Clara,” she said. “Your house is 
nice and your food and drink all that could be de- 
sired. But it was not a hilarious party, and I’ll put 
it up to the others.” 

Then and there she told about the swimming and 
the golf and the knitting. The men roared. She 
exaggerated, of course. Bill did not go to sleep at 
dinner. But she made a good story of it, and I 
caught Roger’s eye fixed on me with a look that said 
plainly thatlie’d always known I’d made a mistake, 
and here was the proof. 

We went out into the garden and sat under a 
tree. But soon the others paired off and wandered 
about. Roger and I were left alone, and I was boil- 
ing. 


AFFINITIES 


124 

“Don’t look like that, little girl,” said Roger, 
bending toward me. “It hurts me terribly to — to 
think you are not happy.” 

He put a hand over mine, and at that moment 
Alice Warrington turned from a rosebush she and 
Peter were pretending to examine, and saw me. She 
raised her eyebrows, and that gave me the idea. I 
put my free hand over Roger’s and tried to put my 
soul into my eyes. 

“Don’t move,” I said. “Hold the position for a 
moment, Roger, and look desperately unhappy.” 

“I am,” he said. “Seeing you again brings it all 
back. Are they looking*? Shall I kiss your hand?” 

I looked over. Alice and Peter were still staring. 

“Bend over,” I said quickly, “and put your cheek 
against it. It’s more significant and rather hopeless. 
I’ll explain later.” 

He did extremely well. He bent over passionately 
until his head was almost in my lap, and I could see 
how carefully his hair was brushed over a thin place 
at the crown. Thank goodness. Bill keeps his hair 
anyhow ! 

“How’s this?” he said in a muffled voice. 

“That’s plenty.” I’d made up my mind, and I 
meant to go through with it. But I felt like a fool. 
There’s something about broad daylight that makes 
even real sentiment look idiotic. 

He sat up and looked into my eyes. 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 125 


“There are times,’’ he said, raising his voice, 
“when I feel I can’t stand it. I’m desperately — 
desperately unhappy, Clara.” 

“We must make the best of things,” I said, and 
let my eyes wander toward Alice and Peter. They 
had turned and were retreating swiftly through the 
garden. 

“Now,” said Roger, sitting back and smoothing 
his hair, “what’s it all about*?” 

So I told him and explained my plan. Even now, 
when I never want to see him again, I must admit 
that Roger is a sport. He never turned a hair. 

“Of course I’ll do it. It isn’t as hard as you im- 
agine. Our meeting like this revives the old fire. 
I’m mad about you, recklessly mad, and you’re crazy 
about me. All right so far. But a thing like that 
won’t throw much of a crimp into Carrie. Probably 
she expects it.” 

“To-night,” I explained, “we’ll be together, but 
silent and moody. When we smile at their nonsense 
it is to be a forced smile. We’re intent on ourselves. 
Do you see*? And you might go to Carrie after din- 
ner and tell her you think you’ll go. You can’t stand 
being near me. It’s too painful. I’ll talk to one 
of the men too.” 

He looked rather uncomfortable. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that, Clara. They wouldn’t 
understand.” 


126 AFFINITIES 


“Not about you,” I retorted coldly. “Fll merely 
indicate that Bill and I aren’t hitting it off, and that 
a woman has a right to be happy. Then, when things 
happen, they’ll remember what I said.” 

He turned round his wicker chair so that he faced 
me. 

“When things happen?” he said. “What things?” 

“When we elope to-morrow night,” I replied. 

I’m not defending myself. Goodness knows I’ve 
gone through all that. I am merely explaining. And 
I think Roger deserves part of the blame, but of 
course the woman always suffers. If he had only 
been frank with me at the time it need never have 
happened. Besides, I’ve been back to that bridge 
again and again, and with ordinary intelligence and 
a hammer he could have repaired it. It is well 
enough for him to say he didn’t have a hammer. 
He should have had a hammer. 

At the mention of an elopement Roger changed 
colour, but I did not remember that until afterward. 
He came up to scratch rather handsomely, when he 
was able to speak, but he insisted that I write the 
whole thing to Bill. 

“I can tell him afterward,” I protested. 

“That won’t help me if he has beaten me up first. 
You write him to the office, so he’ll get it Monday 
morning when he gets back from the game. If any- 
thing should slip up you’re protected, don’t you see? 


-CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 127 


Tell him it’s a joke and why we’re doing it. I — I 
hope Bill has kept his sense of humor.” 

Well, it looked simple enough. We were to act 
perfectly silly and moonstruck all the rest of that 
day and Sunday until we had them all thoroughly 
worried. Then on Sunday night we were to steal 
Wallie’s car and run away in it. The through train 
stops at a station about four miles away, at eleven- 
fourteen at night, and we were to start that way and 
then turn around and go to mother’s. 

We planned it thoroughly, I must say. Roger 
said he’d get one of the fellows to cash a check for 
all the money he had about him. They’d be sure to 
think of that when Carrie got my note. And I made 
a draft of the note then and there on the back of 
an old envelope from Roger’s pocket. We made it 
as vague as possible. 

“Dear Carrie,” it ran, “by the time you receive 
this I shall be on my way to happiness. Try to for- 
give me. I couldn’t stand things another moment. 
We only live one life and we all make mistakes. 
Read Ellen Key and don’t try to follow me. I’m 
old enough to know my own mind, and all you have 
been saying this last few days has convinced me 
that when a chance for happiness comes one is a fool 
not to take it. Had it not been for you I should 
never have had my eyes opened to what I’ve been 


128 


AFFINITIES 


missing all this time. I have wasted my best years, 
but at last I am being true to myself. Clara.” 

‘"Now,” I said, rather viciously I dare say, “let 
her read that and throw a fit. She’ll never again be 
able to accuse me of making things dull for her.” 

Roger read it over. 

“We’d better write Bill’s letter,” he said, “and 
get it off. We — it wouldn’t do to have Bill worried, 
you know.” 

So we went into the house and wrote Bill’s letter. 
We explained everything — how stupid they’d all 
found our party and that this was only a form of 
revenge. 

“Suppose,” Roger said as I sealed it, “suppose 
they get excited and send for the policed” 

That stumped us. It was one thing to give them 
a bad night, and telephone them in the morning that 
it was a joke and that I’d gone direct from Carrie’s 
to mother’s, which was the arrangement. But Car- 
rie was a great one for getting in detectives. You 
remember, the time her sister was married, that Car- 
rie had a detective in the house for a week before 
the wedding watching the presents, and how at the 
last minute the sister wanted to marry the detective, 
who was a good-looking boy, and they had a dread- 
ful time getting her to the church. 

We both thought intently for quite a time. 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 129 

“We must cut the telephone wire, Roger,” I said 
at length. 

Roger was not eager about cutting the telephone. 
He said he would probably be shocked to death, al- 
though if he could find a pair of rubber overshoes 
he’d take the risk. 

“It ought to be done the very last thing,” he said. 
“No use rousing their suspicions early.” 

We played up hard all afternoon. Roger kissed 
the lump of sugar he put in my tea, and went and 
sulked on the parapet when Peter Arundel came and 
sat beside me. Carrie joined him there, and I could 
see her talking earnestly to him while Roger looked 
out over the landscape with eyes that were positively 
sombre. 

“Having a good time?” said Peter Arundel to me. 

“Heavenly, Peter,” I replied, looking at Roger. 
“I didn’t believe I could be so happy.” 

“Go to it,” said Peter. “What’s a day or two 
out of a lifetime.” 

I turned round and faced him, my hands gripped 
hard in my lap. 

“That’s it,” I said tensely. “That’s the thought 
that’s killing me. One can only be happy for a day 
or two.” 

“Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as that,’* said Peter. 
“You have a pretty fair time, you know, Clara. 
Old Bill’s a good sort.” 


— - — — 

130 AFFINITIES 

‘‘Oh, Bill!” I said. 

‘‘I went to college with Bill. Maybe Bill hasn't 
any frills, but he's a real man.” He glared at Rog- 
er's drooping shoulders. ‘‘He's no tailor's dummy 
anyhow.” 

I ignored this. 

“Peter,” I said in a thin voice, “have you ever 
xead Ellen Key?” 

“Not on your life!” said Peter. 

I quoted a bit I happened to remember. 

“ ‘Nothing is wiser than the modern woman's de- 
sire to see life with her own eyes, not only with 
those of a husband.' ” I sighed. 

“If I were Bill,” said Peter, “I'd burn that book.” 

“ ‘Nothing,’ ” I continued, “ ‘is more true than 
that souls which are parted by a lack of perfect 
frankness never belonged to one another.' ” 

“Look here,” said Peter, and got up; “I think 
you've lost your mind, Clara — you and Roger Waite 
both. Look at him mooning over there. Pd like to 
turn the garden hose on him.” 

I looked at Roger — a long gaze that made Peter 
writhe. 

“ ‘Love's double heartbeat' ” I began. But 

Peter stalked away, muttering. 

Carrie had left Roger, so I put down my cup and 
followed him to the parapet of the terrace. 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 131 


“Darling !” he said. And then, finding Peter was 
not with me: “How’s it going^” 

“Cracking! They’re all worried already.” 

“We’ve hardly started. Slip your arm through 
mine, Clara, and I’ll hold your hand. Dear little 
hand!” he said. “When I think that instead of 

that ring ” Here he choked and kissed my hand. 

Then I saw that Harry Delaney was just below the 
wall. ^ ' 

Carrie’s voice broke in on our philandering. 

“If,” she said coldly, “you two people can be 
pried apart with a crowbar for a sufficient length 
of time, we will motor to Bubbling Spring. There’s 
just time before dinner.” 

“I don’t think I’ll go, Carrie,” I said languidly. 
“I have a headache and Roger has just offered to 
read to me. Do you remember how you used to 
cure my headaches, Roger*?” 

“I’d rather not talk about those days, Clara,” said 
Roger in a shaky voice. 

“I wish you two people could see and hear your- 
selves!” Carrie cried furiously, and turned on her 
heel. 

“I guess that will hold her for a while,” Roger 
purred. “Clara, you’re an angel and an inspiration. 
I haven’t had such a good time since I had scarlet 
fever.” 

Dinner, which should have been gay, was simply 


AFFINITIES 


132 

noisy. They were all worried, and it is indicative 
of how Carrie had forgotten her pose and herself 
that she wore her diamond necklace. Roger had 
been placed at the other end of the table from me, 
but he slipped in and changed the cards. There were 
half a dozen dinner guests, but Roger and I ate 
little or nothing. 

‘‘Act as though the thought of food sickens you,’’ 
I commanded. 

“But I’m starving!” 

“I’ll have my maid take a tray into the garden 
later.” 

In spite of me he broke over at the entree, which 
was extremely good. But everyone saw that we 
were not eating. The woman on Roger’s right, a 
visitor, took advantage of a lull in the noise to ac- 
cuse Roger of being in love. Ida giggled, but Roger 
turned to his neighbour. 

“I am in love,” he said mournfully; “hopelessly, 
idiotically, madly, recklessly in love.” 

“With any particular person*?” 

“With you,” said Roger, who had never seen her 
before. 

She quite fluttered. 

“But I am married !” 

“Unfortunate, but not fatal,” said Roger distinct- 
ly, while everyone listened. “These days one must 
be true to one’s self.” 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 133 


We were awfully pleased with ourselves that 
evening. I said my head still ached and I could 
not dance. Roger and I sat out-of-doors most of 
the time, and at eleven o’clock Powell, my maid, 
brought out a tray of what was left from dinner 
and the dance supper. She took it by order to a 
small shaded porch off the billiard room, and we 
found her there with it. 

‘Thank you, Powell,” I said. But Roger fol- 
lowed her into the house. When he returned he 
was grinning. 

“Might as well do it right while we’re about it,” 
he observed. “To-morrow morning Powell will go 
to Carrie and tell her you sat up all night by the 
window, and she’s afraid you are going to be ill.” 

In the dusk we shook hands over the tray. 

Well, a lot of things happened, such as our over- 
hearing the men in the billiard room debating about 
getting poor old Bill on the long distance. 

“It isn’t a flirtation,” said Wilbur Bayne. “I’ve 
seen Clara flirting many a time. But this is differ- 
ent. They’re reckless, positively reckless. When a 
man as fond of his stomach as Roger lets a whole 
meal go by, he’s pretty far gone.” 

Roger bent over, with a part of a squab in his 
hand. 

“Have they bitten !” he said. “They’ve not only 


AFFINITIES 


134 

swallowed hook, line and sinker but they’re walking 
up the bank to put themselves in the basket !” 

Well, the next morning it was clear that the girls 
had decided on a course and were following it. Al- 
though it had been arranged that everyone was to 
sleep late, breakfast trays appeared in the rooms at 
nine-thirty, with notes asking us to go to church. 
When I said I had not slept, and did not care to 
go, no one went, and when Roger appeared at eleven 
the girls surrounded me like a cordon of police. 

Roger was doing splendidly. He came up across 
the tennis court, covered with dust, and said he had 
not slept and had been walking since six o’clock. 
The men eyed him with positive ferocity. 

I’ll not go into the details of that day, except to 
relate a conversation Ida Elliott and I had after 
luncheon. She came into my room and closed the 
door behind her softly, as if I were ill. 

'‘Well,” she said, "I did think, Clara, that if you 
didn’t have any sense, you would have some con- 
sideration for Carrie.” 

I had been addressing the envelope to Bill, and 
so I shoved a sheet of paper over it. 

‘Tm not going to try to read what you are 
writing,” she said rudely. 

“What do you mean about Carried” 

“She’s almost ill, that’s all. How could anyone 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 135 


have had any idea that Roger and you ” She 

fairly choked. 

“Roger and I are only glad to be together again, 

I said defiantly. Then I changed to a wistful tone. 
Just hearing it made me sorry for myself. “We are 
old friends; Carrie knew that. It is cruel of you 
all to — to spoil the little bit of happiness I can get 
out of life.” 

“What about Bill*?” 

“Bill r I said vaguely. “Oh— Bill! Well, Bill 
would never stand in the way of my being true to 
myself. He would want me to be happy.” 

I put my handkerchief suddenly to my eyes, and 
she gave me a scathing glance. 

“I’m going to telephone Bill,” she said. “You’re 
not sane, Clara. And when you come back to your 
senses it may be too late.” 

She flounced out, and I knew she would call Bill 
if she could. From the window I could see that 
Harry Delaney had Roger by the arm and was walk- 
ing him up and down. It was necessary, if the fun 
was to go on, to disconnect the telephone. I ran 
down to the library and dropped the instrument 
on the floor twice, but when I put it to my ear to 
see if it was still working I found it was, for Cen- 
tral was saying: “For the love of heaven, something 
nearly busted my eardrum !” 

Ida had not come down yet, and the telephone 


AFFINITIES 


136 

was on a table in the corner, beside a vase of flowers. 
When I saw the flowers I knew I was saved. I 
turned the vase over and let the water soak into the 
green cord that covers the wires. I knew it would 
short-circuit the telephone, for once one of the maids 
at home, washing the floor, had wet the cord, and we 
were cut off for an entire day. 

During the afternoon I gave Harry Delaney the 
letter to Bill. Harry was going to the little town 
that was the post office to get something for Carrie. 

“You won’t forget to mail it, will you, Harry 
I asked in a pathetic voice. 

He read the address and looked at me. 

“What are you writing to Bill for, Clara? He’ll 
be home in the morning.” 

I looked confused. Then I became frank. 

“I’m writing him something I don’t particularly 
care to tell him.” 

He fairly groaned and thrust the thing into his 
pocket. 

“For refined cruelty and absolute selfishness,” he 
said, “commend me to the woman with nothing to 
do but to get into mischief.” 

“Will you promise to mail it?” 

“Oh, I’ll mail it all right,” he said; “but I give 
you until six o’clock this evening to think it over. 
I’m not going to the station until then.” 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 137 


“To think over what^” I asked, my eyes opened 
innocently wide. But he flung away in a fury. 

It was rather fun that afternoon. If my party 
had been dreary on Sunday it was nothing to 
Carrie’s. They’d clearly all agreed to stay round 
and keep Roger and me apart. Everybody sulked, 
and the men got the Sunday newspapers and buried 
themselves in them. Once I caught Roger dropping 
into a doze. He had refused the paper and had been 
playing up well, sitting back in his chair with his 
cap over his eyes and gazing at me until everybody 
wiggled. 

“Roger,” I called, when I saw his eyes closing, 
“are you game for a long walk^” 

Roger tried to look eager. 

“Sure,” he said. 

“Haven’t you a particle of humanity *?” Carrie 
demanded. She knew some of them would have to 
go along, and nobody wanted to walk. It was boil- 
ing. “He has been up since dawn and he’s walked 
miles.” 

Roger ignored her. 

“To the ends of the world — with you, Clara,” he 
said, and got up. 

In the end they all went. It was a tragic-looking 
party. We walked for miles and miles, and Carrie 
was carrying her right shoe when we got back. It 


138 


AFFINITIES 


was too late to dress for dinner, and everyone was 
worn out. So we went in as we were. 

“Fm terribly sorry iFs nearly Over,” I babbled 
as the soup was coming in. “It has been the most 
wonderful success, hasn’t it^ Ida, won’t you have 
us all next week? Maybe we can send the husbands 
to the yacht races.” 

“Sorry,” said Ida coldly; “Fve something else 
on.” 

Worried as they were, nobody expected us to run 
away. How to let them know what had happened, 
and put a climax to their discomfiture, was the ques- 
tion. I solved it at last by telling Powell to come 
in at midnight with the sleeping medicine Carrie 
had given her for me. I knew, when she found I was 
not there, she would wait and at last raise the alarm. 
What I did not know was that she would come in 
half an hour early, and cut off our lead by thirty 
minutes. 

The evening dragged like the afternoon, and so 
thoroughly was the spice out of everything for them 
all, that when I went upstairs at ten-thirty Ida 
Elliott was singing Jim’s praises to Wilbur Bayne, 
and Carrie had got out the children’s photographs 
and was passing them round. 

As I went out through the door Roger opened for 
me, he bowed over my hand and kissed it. 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 139 

‘‘Oh, cut it out !” I heard Peter growl, and there 
was a chorus from the others. 

I had to stop in the hall outside and laugh. It 
was the last time I laughed for a good many hours. 

By eleven I was ready. Everyone was upstairs, 
and Carrie had found out about the telephone by 
trying to call up her mother to inquire about the chil- 
dren. I had packed a small suitcase and at Roger’s 
whistle I was to drop it out the window to him. 
Things began to go wrong with that, for just as I 
was ready to drop it someone rapped at my door. I 
swung it too far out, and it caught Roger full in the 
chest and carried him over backward. I had just 
time to see him disappear in the shrubbery with a 
sort of dull thud when Alice Warrington knocked 
again. 

She came in and sat on the bed. 

“I don’t want to be nasty, Clara,” she said, “but 
you know how fond I am of you, and I don’t want 
you to misunderstand Roger. It’s his way to make 
violent love to people and then get out. Of course 
you know he’s being very attentive to Maisie Brown. 
She’s jealous of you now. Somebody told her Roger 
used to be crazy about you. If she hears of 
this ” 

“Clara!” said Roger’s voice under the window. 

Alice rose, with the most outraged face I’ve ever 


seen. 


140 


AFFINITIES 


“He is positively shameless,” she said. “As for 
you, Clara, I can’t tell you how I feel.’' 

“Clara!” said Roger. “I must speak to you. 
Just one word.” 

Alice swept out of the room and banged the door. 
I went to the window. 

“Something seems to have broken in the dratted 
thing,” he said. “It smells like eau de Cologne. 
I’m covered with it.’' 

As it developed later it was eau de Cologne. I 
have never got a whiff of it since that I don’t turn 
fairly sick. And all of that awful night Roger 
fairly reeked with it. 

Well, by midnight everything was quiet, and I 
got downstairs and into the drive without alarming 
anyone. Roger was waiting, and for some reason 
or other — ^possibly the knock — ^he seemed less en- 
thusiastic. 

“I hope Harry remembered the letter to Bill,” 
he said. “Whether this thing is a joke or not de- 
pends on the other person’s sense of humor. What 
in heaven’s name made you put scent in your bag*?” 

He had his car waiting at the foot of the drive, 
and just as I got in we heard it thunder. 

“How far is it to your mother’s*?” 

“Twelve miles.’' 

“It’s going to rain.” 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 141 

“Rain or not, I'm not going back, Roger,” I said. 
“Imagine Bill’s getting that letter for nothing.” 

He got into the car and it began to rain at once. 
Everyone knows about that storm now. We had 
gone about four miles when the sky fairly opened. 
The water beat in under the top and washed about 
our feet. We drove up to the hubs in water, and the 
lights, instead of showing us the way, only lit up a 
wall of water ahead. It was like riding into Niagara 
Falls. We were pretty sick, I can tell you. 

“Why didn’t you look at the sky*?” I yelled at 
Roger, above the beating of the storm. “Bill can 
always tell when it’s going to storm.” 

“Oh, damn Bill!” said Roger, and the car slid 
off the road and into a gully. Roger just sat still 
and clutched the wheel. 

“Aren’t you going to do something?” I snapped. 
“I’m not going to sit here all night and be drowned.” 

“Is there anything you could suggest?” 

“Can’t you get out and push it?” 

“I cannot.” 

But after five minutes or so he did crawl out, and 
by tying my suitcase straps round one of the wheels 
he got the car back into the road. I daresay I was 
a trifle pettish by that time. 

“I wish you wouldn’t drip on me,” I said. 

“I beg your pardon,” he replied, and moved as 
far from me as he could. 


142 AFFINITIES . 

We went on in silence. At last: 

“There’s one comfort about getting that soaking,” 
he said: “it’s washed that damned perfume off.” 

There’s one thing about Bill, he keeps his temper. 
And he doesn’t raise the roof when he gets his clothes 
wet. He rather likes getting into difficulties, to 
show how well he can get out of them. But Roger 
is like a cat. He always hated to get his feet wet. 

“If you had kept the car in the centre of the road 
you wouldn’t have had to get out,” I said shortly. 

“Oh, well, if you’re going back to first causes,” he 
retorted, “if you’d never suggested this idiotic thing 
I wouldn’t be laying up a case of lumbago at this 
minute.” 

“Lumbago is middle-aged, isn’t itT’ 

“We’re neither of us as young as we were a few 
years ago.” 

That was inexcusable. Roger is at least six years 
older than I am. Besides, even if it were true, there 
was no necessity for him to say it. But there was 
no time to quarrel, for at that moment we were 
going across a bridge over a small stream. It was 
a river now. The first thing I knew was that the 
car shook and rocked and there was a dull groaning 
underneath. The next minute we had gone slowly 
down about four feet and the creek was flowing 
over us. 

We said nothing at first. The lights went off al- 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 143 

most immediately, as the engine drowned, and there 
we sat in the flood, and the first thing I knew I 
was crying. 

‘‘The bridge is broken,” said Roger, above the 
rush of the stream. 

“I didn’t think you were washing the car,” I 
whimpered. “We’ll be drowned, that’s all.” 

The worst of the storm was over, but as far as I 
was concerned it might just as well have been pour- 
ing. When Roger got his matches and tried to light 
one it only made a sick streak of phosphorescence on 
the side of the box. To make things worse, Roger 
turned round, and where the road crossed the brow 
of the hill behind us there was the glow of automo- 
bile lamps. He swore under his breath. 

“They’re coming, Clara,” he said. “That fool of 
a maid didn’t wait until midnight.” 

The thought of being found like that, waist-deep 
in water, drove me to frenzy. I knew how they’d 
laugh, how they’d keep on laughing for years. 
They’d call us the Water Babies probably, or some- 
thing equally hateful. I just couldn’t stand the 
thought. 

I got up. 

“Let them think we’re drowned — anything,” I 
said desperately. “I will not be found like this.” 

Roger looked about like a hunted animal. 

“There’s — there’s a house near here on the hill,” 


AFFINITIES 


144 

he said. Afterward I remembered how he hesitated 
over it. “We could get up there, I’m pretty sure.’’ 

He looked back. 

“They seem to have stopped,” he said. “Perhaps 
the other bridge has gone.” 

He lifted me out and set me on the bank. He 
was not particularly gentle about it, and I was all 
he could carry. That’s one thing about Bill — ^he’s 
as strong as an ox and as gentle as a young gazelle. 

Well, we scurried up the bank, the water pouring 
off us, and I lost a shoe. Roger wouldn’t wait until 
I found it, but dragged me along, panting. Sud- 
denly I knew that I hated him with a deadly hatred. 
The thought of how nearly I had married him made 
me shiver. 

“I wish you’d let go of me,” I said. 

“Why^? You can’t climb alone in the silly clothes 
you wear.” 

“Perhaps not, but I don’t like you to touch me.” 

“Oh, if you feel like that ” He let me go, 

and I almost fell. “You know, Clara, I am trying 
hard to restrain myself, but — this is all your doing.” 

“I suppose I broke the bridge down,” I said bit- 
terly, “and brought on the rain, and all the rest 
of it.” 

“Now I recognise the Clara I used to know,” he 
had the audacity to say, “always begging the ques- 
tion and shifting the responsibility. For heaven’s 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 145 


sake don’t stop to quarrel ! They’ve probably found 
the car by this time.” 

We got to the house and I fell exhausted on the 
steps. To my surprise Roger got out a bunch of 
keys and fitted one to the lock. 

“I know these people,” he said. “I — I sometimes 
come out in the fall for a bit of shooting. Place is 
closed now.” 

The interior looked dark and smelled musty. I 
didn’t want to go in, but it was raining again and 
there was nothing else to do. 

‘‘Better overcome your repugnance and give me 
your hand,” he said. “If we turn on a light they’ll 
spot us.” 

Oh, it is all very well to say, looking back, that 
we should have sat in the car until we were found, 
and have carried it all off as a part of the joke. I 
couldn’t, that’s flat. I couldn’t have laughed if I’*d 
been paid to. 

We bumped into a square hall and I sat down. It 
was very quiet all at once, and the only thing to be 
heard was the water dripping from us to the hard- 
wood floor. 

“If that’s a velvet chair you’re on it will be 
ruined,” said Roger’s voice out of the darkness. 

“I hope it is. Where is the telephone *?” 

“There is a telephone closet under the stairs.” 

“You know a lot about this house. Whose is it?” 


AFFINITIES 


146 

“It’s the Brown place. You know it.” 

“Maisie Brown’s!” 

“Yes.” He was quite sullen. 

“And you have a key like one of the family! 
Roger, you are engaged to her!” 

“I was,” he said. “The chances are when this gets 
out I won’t be.” 

I don’t know why now, but it struck me as funny. 
I sat and laughed like a goose, and the more I 
laughed the harder Roger breathed. 

“You’ve got to see me through this, Clara,” he 
said at last. “You can’t telephone Carrie — you’ve 
fixed all that. But you can get your mother. Tell 
her the circumstances and have her send a car for 
you. I’ll stay here to-night. And if you take my 
advice you’ll meet Bill at the train to-morrow morn- 
ing and beat Carrie to it. She’ll be in town with a 
line of conversation by daybreak.” 

He found some dry matches and led me to the 
telephone. Something in the way I dripped, or be- 
cause I padded across the floor in one stocking foot, 
made him a trifle more human. 

“I’ll close the curtains and light the log fire,” he 
said. “Things are bad enough without your taking 
pneumonia.” 

The moment I took the receiver off the hook I 
knew the wires were down somewhere. I sat for a 
moment, then I opened the door. Roger was on his 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 147 


knees lighting the fire. He looked very thin, with 
his clothes stuck to him, and the hair that he wore 
brushed over the bare place had been washed down, 
and he looked almost bald. 

‘‘Roger,” I said, with the calmness of despair, 
“the wires are down!” 

“Hush,” said Roger suddenly. “And close that 
door.” 

It seemed rather foolish to me at the time. Since 
they had followed us, they’d know perfectly well 
that if Roger was there I was. 

In vMlhed Maisie Brown and about a dozen other 
'people I 

I can still hear the noise they made coming in, 
and then a silence, broken by Maisie’s voice. 

“Why, Roger!” she said. 

“Awfully surprising to see you here — I mean, I 
expect you are surprised to see me here,” said 
Roger’s voice, rather thin and stringy. “The fact 
is, I was going by, and — it was raining hard, and 
I ” 

“Then that was your car in the creek?” 

“Well, yes,” Roger admitted, after a hesitation. 
He was evidently weighing every word, afraid of 
committing himself to anything dangerous. 

“I thought you were at Carrie Smith’s.” 

“I was on my way home.” 


AFFINITIES 


148 

Everybody laughed. It was about a dozen miles 
to Roger’s road home from Carrie’s. 

‘'Come on, now, there’s a mystery. Own up,” 
said a man’s voice. “Where’s the beautiful lady^ 
Drowned T' 

Luckily no one waited for an answer. They de- 
manded how he had got in, and when he said he 
had a key they laughed again. Some one told Maisie 
she might as well confess. If Roger had a key to 
the house it required explanation. 

If ever I heard cold suspicion in a girl’s voice, it 
was in Maisie’s when she answered: 

“Oh, we’re engaged all right, if that’s what you 
mean,” she said. “But I think Roger and I ” 

They didn’t give her a chance to finish, the idiots ! 
They gave three cheers, and then, as nearly as I 
could make out, they formed a ring and danced 
round them. They’d been to a picnic somewhere, 
and as the bridges were down they were there for 
the night. 

Do you think they went to bed? 

Not a bit of it. They found some canned things 
in a pantry, and fixed some hot drinks and drank to 
Maisie and Roger. And I sat in the telephone closet 
and tried not to sneeze. 

I sat there for two hours. 

About two o’clock I heard Maisie say she would 
have to telephone home, and if a totally innocent 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 149 


person can suffer the way I did I don’t know how 
a guilty one could live. But Roger leaped in front 
of her. 

‘Til do it, honey,” he said. “I — I was just think- 
ing of telephoning.” 

They were close to the door. 

“Don’t call me honey,” Maisie said in a tense 
voice. “I know about Carrie Smith’s party and who 
was there. After the way Clara has schemed all these 
years to get you back, to have you fall into a trap 
like that! It’s sickening!” 

She put her hand on the knob of the door. 

“Listen, darling,” Roger implored. “I — I don’t 
care a hang for anyone but you. I’m perfectly 
wretched. I ” 

He pulled her hand off the knob of the door and 
I heard him kiss it. 

“Let me call your mother,” he said. “She’ll know 
you are all right when I’m here.” 

Well, I had to listen. The idea of her saying I’d 
tried to get him back, when everybody knows how 
he carried on when I turned him down! I hadn’t 
given him a thought for years. 

“Did you make love to Clara 

“Certainly not. Look here, Maisie, you can aL 
' ford to be magnanimous. Clara’s a nice woman, but 
she’s years older than you are. You know who loves 
you, don’t you?” 


150 


AFFINITIES 


Positively he was appealing. He sounded fairly 
sick. 

‘‘Get mother on the wire/’ said Maisie curtly. 
“Then call me. Til talk to her.” 

Roger opened the door as soon as she had gone 
and squeezed in beside me. 

“She’s coming to telephone. You’ll have to go 
somewhere else, Clara,” he said. 

“Where, for instance*?” 

“I may be able to collect them in the pantry. 
Then you can run across and get out the door.” 

“Into the rain^” 

“Well, you can’t stay here, can you?” 

“I’ll do nothing of the sort. Go and tell her 
the wires are down. They are. And then get that 
crowd of flappers upstairs. If they go the men will. 
I give you ten minutes. At the end of that time 
I’m coming out to the fire. I’m cold.” 

“And after they go up, what?” 

“Then you’re going into somebody’s room to steal 
me a pair of dry shoes. Get Maisie’ s, she’s about 
my size. We’ll have to walk to mother’s.” 

“I can’t leave, Clara. If anything happened and 
I was missing ” 

When I said nothing he knew I was in earnest. 
He went out and told them the telephone was out 
of order, and somehow or other he shooed them up- 
stairs. I opened the door of the telephone closet for 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 151 


air, and I could hear them overhead, ragging Roger 
about the engagement and how he happened to get 
to Maisie’s when it was so far from his road home. 
Every time I thought they were settled, some fool 
of a boy or giggling debutante would come down 
again and look for soap, or towels, or matches, or 
heaven knows what. I could have strangled the lot 
of them. 

By three o’clock it was fairly quiet, and I crept 
out and sat by the log hre. If I had had a shoe 
I would have started off then and there. I’m no 
coward and I was desperate. But I couldn’t go in 
my silk stockings. And when after a while Roger 
slipped down the stairs he had no shoes for me. 

‘‘I’ve tried all the girls’ doors,” he said wretched- 
ly, “and they’re locked. Couldn’t you tie a towel 
round your foot, or something? I’m going to get 
into trouble over this thing yet. I feel it.” 

“Go up and bring me little Teddy Robinson’s 
shoes,” I snapped. “It won’t compromise you to go 
into his room, I daresay.” 

“What if he’s not asleep?” 

“Tell him you’re going to clean them. Tell him 
anything. And, Roger, don’t let Maisie pull the 
ingenue stunt on you. I may be years older than 
she is, but Maisie’s no child.” 

Well, with everyone gone and Roger hunting me 
some boots, I felt rather better. I went to the pantry 


AFFINITIES 


152 

and fixed some hot milk and carried it in to drink 
by the fire. Roger came down with the boots, and 
to save time he laced them on my feet while I sat 
back and sipped. 

That, of course, in spite of what Bill pretends to 
think, is why Roger was on his knees before me 
when Peter walked in. 

Oh, yes, Peter Arundel walked in! It just shows 
the sort of luck I played in that night. He walked 
in and slammed the door. 

“Thank heaven!’’ he said, and stalked over to 
me and jerked the cup out of my hand. “You 
pair of idiots!” he fairly snarled. “What sort of 
an escapade is this anyhow^” 

“It — it’s a joke, Peter,” I quavered. He stared 
at me in speechless scorn. “Positively it is a joke, 
Peter.” 

“I daresay,” he said grimly. “Perhaps to-mor- 
row I may see it that way. The question is, will 
Bill think it’s a joke?” 

He looked round, and luckily for me he saw all 
the girls’ wraps lying about. 

“If the family’s here, Clara,” he said in a milder 
voice, “I — I may be doing you an injustice.” 

Roger had not said a word. He was standing in 
front of the fire, watching the stairs. 

“When we found the note,” Peter went on in his 
awful booming voice, “saying you were going at last 


CLARA’S LITTLE ESCAPADE 153 


to be true to yourself, and when you and Roger had 
disappeared, what were we to think? Especially 
after the way you two had fallen into each other’s 
arms from the moment you met.” 

‘'How interesting!” said a voice from the stair- 
case. 

It was Maisie ! 

Well, what’s the use of going into it again? She 
gave Roger his ring instantly, and Roger was posi- 
tively grey. He went back on me without a particle 
of shame — said Td suggested the whole thing and 
begged him to help me; that he’d felt like a fool 
the whole time. 

“Maisie, darling,” he said, “surely you know that 
there’s nobody in all the world for me but you.” 

He held out the ring to her, but she shook her 
head. 

“I’m not angry — not any more,” she said. “I’ve 
lost my faith in you, that’s all. One thing I’m pro- 
foundly grateful for — that you and Clara had this 
— this explosion before we were married and not 
after.” 

“Maisie !” he cried. 

All at once I remembered Bill’s letter, which 
would positively clear us. But Peter said Harry 
Delaney’s coat had been stolen from the machine, 
letter and all! Maisie laughed at that, as if she 
didn’t believe there had been such a letter, and 


154 AFFINITIES ' 

Roger went a shade greyer. All at once it came to 
me that now Bill would never forgive me. He is so 
upright, Bill is, and he expects everyone to come up 
to his standard. And in a way Bill had always had 
me on a pedestal, and he would never believe that 
I had been such a fool as to jump off for a lark. 

Maisie turned and walked upstairs, leaving the 
three of us there, Roger holding the ring and staring 
at it with a perfectly vacant face. At last he turned 
and went to the door. 

‘‘Where are you going, Roger?’’ I asked help- 
lessly. 

“I’m going out to drown myself,” he said, and 
went out. 

I shall pass over the rest briefly. Peter took me 
home in his car. I did not go to mother’s. For one 
thing, the bridge was down. For another, it seemed 
better for Bill and me to settle things ourselves with- 
out family interference. 

I went home and went to bed, and all day Mon- 
day I watched for Bill. Powell came over and I put 
on my best negligee and waited, with a water bottle 
to keep my feet warm and my courage up. 

He did not come. 

I stayed in bed for three days, and there was not 
a sign from him. Carrie and Ida telephoned, but 
only formal messages, and Alice Warrington sent 
me a box of flowers with her card. But Bill did 


CLARA^S LITTLE ESCAPADE 155 

not come home or call up. I knew he must be stay- 
ing at the club, and I had terrible hours when I 
knew he would never forgive me, and then there 
would be a divorce, and I wanted to die. Roger 
never gave a sign, but he had not drowned himself. 

Wednesday evening came, and no Bill. By that 
time I knew it was Bill or nobody for me. After 
those terrible two days at Carrie’s, the thought of 
Bill’s ugly, quiet face made me perfectly homesick 
for him. I didn’t care how much he fell asleep in 
the evening after dinner. That only showed how 
contented he was. And I tried to imagine being 
married to Roger, and seeing him fuss about his ties, 
and brush the hair over the thin places on top of 
his head, and I simply couldn’t. 

It was Wednesday evening when I heard a car 
come up the drive. I knew at once that it was Bill. 
I had barely time to turn out all the lights but the 
pink-shaded one by the bed, and to lay a handker- 
chief across my eyes, when he came in. 

‘Well, Clara,” he said, standing just inside the 
door, ‘T thought we’d better talk this over.” 

“Bill!” I said, from under the handkerchief. 

“I should have come out sooner,” he said with- 
out moving, “but at first I could not trust myself. 
I needed a little time.” 

“Who told you*?” 

“That doesn’t matter, does it? Everybody knows 


AFFINITIES 


156 

it. But that’s not the question. The real issue is 
between you and me and that — that nincompoop, 
Waite.” 

“What has Roger got to do with it?” I looked 
out from under the handkerchief, and he was livid, 
positively. 

“Bill,” I said desperately, “will you come over 
and sit down on the side of the bed and let me tell 
you the whole story?” 

“I won’t be bamboozled, Clara; this is serious. 
If you’ve got anything to say, say it. I’ll sit here.” 

He sat down just inside the door on a straight 
chair and folded his long arms. It was a perfectly 
hopeless distance. 

“Bill !” I said appealingly, and he came over and 
sat, very uncompromising and stiff, on the side of 
the bed. I put out my hand, and after a moment’s 
hesitation he took it, but I must say without en- 
thusiasm. I felt like the guiltiest wretch unhung. 
That’s what makes me so perfectly furious now. 

“You see. Bill,” I said, “it was like this.” And 
I told him the whole thing. About halfway through 
he dropped my hand. 

“It’s been an awful lesson. Bill,” I ended up. 
“I’ll never say a word again about your enjoying 
yourself the way you want to. You can swim and 
play golf and shoot all you like, and — and sleep 


CLARA^S LITTLE ESCAPADE 157 

after dinnery if you’ll only forgive me. Bill, sup- 
pose I had married Roger Waite 
He drew a long breath. 

‘'So that was it, old dear!” he said. “Well, all 
right. We’ll put the whole thing in the discard.” 
And he leaned over and put his arms round me. 


That ought to be the end of the story. I’d had a 
lesson and so had some of the others. As Carrie 
Smith said afterward, to have a good time is one 
thing, but to be happy is entirely different, and the 
only way to be happy is to be smug and conven- 
tional and virtuous. I never say anything when she 
starts that line of conversation. But once or twice 
I’ve caught her eye, and she has had the grace to 
look uneasy. 

But that’s not all. There is more to the story, and 
now and then I eye Bill, and wonder when he will 
come and tell me the whole thing. For the other 
day, in the back of Bill’s chiffonier, I came across 
the letter to him Harry Delaney said he had lost. 
And Bill had received it Monday morning! 

That is not all.’ Clamped to it was a note from 
Peter Arundel, and that is why I am writing the 
whole story, using names and everything. It was a 
mean trick, and if Bill wants to go to Maisie Brown’s 
wedding he can go. I shall not. 


158 


AFFINITIES 


This is Peter’s note : 

''Dear Old Man: Inclosed is the letter Clara gave 
Delaney to mail, which I read to you last night over 
the long-distance phone. Pm called away or I’d 
bring it round. 

“It was easy enough for you to say not to let 
Clara get away with it, but for a time during the 
storm it looked as if she’d got the bit and was off. 
Luckily their car got stuck in the creek, and the rest 
was easy. We saw them, during a flash of lightning, 
climbing the hill to the Brown place for shelter. 
Luck was with us after that, for Maisie and a crowd 
came along, and we told Maisie the story. I take 
my hat off to Maisie. She’s a trump. If you could 
have seen Roger Waite’s face when she gave him 
back the ring ! Carrie, who was looking through the 
windows with the others, was so sorry for him that 
she wanted to go in and let him cry on her shoulder. 

“I hope Clara didn’t take cold. She must have 
been pretty wet. But you were quite right. It 
wasn’t only that she’d have had the laugh on all 
of us if she got away with it. As you said, it would 
be a bad precedent. 

“Bum this, for the love of Mike. If Clara sees it 
she’ll go crazy. Yours, Peter.” 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 


















THE BORROWED HOUSE 


I 

A nd the things the balloon man said !” observed 
Daphne, stirring her tea. Daphne is my Eng- 
lish cousin, and misnamed. “He went too high and 
Poppy’s nose began to bleed.” 

“It poured,” Poppy confirmed plaintively to me. 
“I leaned over the edge of the basket and it poured. 
And the next day the papers said it had rained blood 
in Tooting and that quantities of people had gone 
to the churches !” Poppy is short and wears her hair 
cut close and curled with an iron all over her head. 
She affects plaids. 

“Then,” Daphne went on, addressing the room in 
general, “he let some gas out of the bag and we be- 
gii to settle. But just when we were directly over 
the Tower he grew excited and threw out sand. He 
said he wasn’t going to hang his balloon on the 
Houses of Parliament like a penny ornament on a 
Christmas tree. And then the wind carried us north 
and we missed it altogether.” 

Mrs. Harcourt-Standish took a tea-cake. I was 

i6i 


162 


AFFINITIES 


sea-sick,” she remarked pensively, ‘'and he was un- 
pleasant about that, too. It was really mountain 
sickness, although, of course, there wasn’t any moun- 
tain. When we began to throw out the handbills 
he asked if I had swallowed them^ too.” 

Mrs. Harcourt-Standish plays up the feminine. 
She is slim and blond, and wears slinky clothes and 
a bang — only they call it a fringe — across her fore- 
head. She has been in prison five times and is sup- 
posed to have influence with the Cabinet. She 
showed me a lot of photographs of herself in the 
dock and in jail, put up in a frame that was made 
to represent a barred window. It was Violet Har- 
court-Standish, you remember, who broke up the 
meeting of the Woman’s Liberty League, the rival 
Suffragette association, by engaging the suite below 
their rooms, burning chemicals in the grates, and 
sending in a fire alarm when the smoke poured out 
of the windows. 

I had been in England visiting Daphne for four 
months while Mother went to Italy, and I had had 
a very queer time. One was apt to go shopping with 
Daphne and end up on a carriage block or the box 
of a hansom cab, passing out handbills about votes 
for women. And once, when we dressed in our best 
gowns and went to a reception for the Cabinet, or 
something of the kind. Daphne stood on the stairs 
and began to make a speech. It turned out that she 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 163 


hadn’t been invited at all and they put her out im- 
mediately — politely, but firmly. I slid away into 
the crowd, quite pale with the shock and disgrace, 
and stood in a comer, waiting to be arrested and 
searched for the spoons. But for a long time no 
one noticed me. Then a sunburned gentleman who 
was passing in the crowd saw me, hesitated and 
came back. 

beg pardon,” he said, and my heart turned en- 
tirely over, "'but I think you came with Miss Wynd- 
ham^? If you will allow me ” 

“I am afraid you have made a mistake,” I re- 
plied frigidly, with my lips stiff with fright. He 
bowed at that and passed on, but not before he had 
looked straight into my eyes and read the lie there. 

After ages I left the window where I had taken 
shelter and got somehow to the dressing-room. Of 
course. Daphne had taken the carriage, so I told a 
sad-eyed maid that I was ill and would not wait for 
my brougham, and to call a cab. I was perfectly 
numb with rage when I got to Daphne’s apartment, 
and burst in like a whirlwind. But Daphne was not 
at home. She came in at three that morning, maud- 
lin with triumph, and found me asleep on the floor 
in my ball-gown, with a half-packed trunk before 
me. 

She brought me tea and toast herself the next 
morning and offered it on her knees, which means 


164 


AFFINITIES 


something for Daphne — she is very stout and almost 
unbendable — and explained that I had been her 
patent of respectability, and that it had been a coup; 
that Mrs. Langley, of the Woman’s Liberty League, 
had hired as a maid for the reception and had never 
got her foot out of the dressing-room! Red hair? 
Yes. And when I told Daphne that Mrs. Langley 
had helped me into my wrap she got up heavily and 
hopped three steps one way and three another, which 
is the way Daphne dances with joy. 

I am afraid I have digressed. It is much harder 
to write a thing than to tell it. I used to write 
stories for our Journal at school and the girls were 
mad over them. But they were love stories, and 
this one deals with English politics and criminals — 
yes, you might call it a crime story. Of course there 
is love, too, but it comes in rather unexpectedly. 

I left Daphne hopping three steps each way in 
triumph. Well, after that she did not take me 
around with her, although her friends came in and 
talked about The Cause to me quite often. And 
gradually I began to see that there was something 
to it, and why, if I paid taxes, shouldn’t I vote? 
And hadn’t I as much intelligence as the cab drivers 
and street sweepers? And why couldn’t I will my 
money to my children if I ever had any? — children, 
not money. Of course, as Father pointed out after- 
ward, I should have been using my abilities in 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 165 

America; but most of the American women I knew 
were so cravenly and abjectly contented. But even 
after my conversion Daphne would not take me in 
the balloon. She said I represented too much money 
to risk dumping in the Thames or hanging on a 
chimney. 

The meeting at Daphne’s was mainly to talk over 
the failure of the balloon ascension and to plan 
something new. But the actual conspiracy that fol- 
lowed was really an accident. It came about in the 
most casual way. 

Violet Harcourt-Standish got up and went to the 
mirror to put on her veil, and some of the people 
began to gather their wraps. 

“I’m tired,” Daphne said suddenly. “We don’t 
seem to get anywhere. We always come out the 
door we go in.” 

“Sometimes forcibly,” Poppy said to me aside. 

“And I haven’t been strong, you know, since last 
summer,” Daphne went on. Everybody nodded 
sympathetically. Daffie had raised a disturbance 
when Royalty was laying a cornerstone and had been 
jailed for it. (They put her to making bags and she 
sewed “Votes for Women” in white thread on every 
bag she made.) “I am going to take Madge down 
to Ivry for a week.” I am Madge. 

Violet turned from the mirror and raised her eye- 
brows. “Ivry !” she said. “How familiar it sounds! 


AFFINITIES 


166 

Do you remember, Daphne, when pressure at the 
Hall became too strong for me, how I used' to ride 
over to Ivry and have hysterics in the Tudor Room? 
And how once I wept on your Louis-Seize divan and 
had to have the purple stains bleached off my face? 
You lived a sort of vicarious matrimonial existence 
in those days, didn’t you?” 

Whatever she may have done to the Louis-Seize 
divan in earlier days, she was cheerful enough now, 
and I hailed her with delight. 

‘‘Do you live near Ivry?” I exclaimed. “How 
jolly!” That is English; I am frightfully English 
in my speech after a few weeks in London.” 

Somebody laughed and Daphne chuckled. It 
isn’t especially feminine to chuckle, but neither is 
Daphne. 

“My dear child,” Mrs. Harcourt-Standish said, 
turning to me, “Harcourt Hall is closed. Mr. Har- 
court is no longer my husband. The one is empty, 
the other in Canada” — vague, but rhetorical — “I 
have forgotten them both.” There was nothing 
ambiguous about that. “I recall the house as miles 
from everything that was joyful. I shall always re- 
gard my being taken there as nothing short of kid- 
napping.” 

Then — she stopped short and glanced at Daphne. 
From Daphne her eyes travelled to Ernestine Sut- 
cliffe, who put down her teacup with a clatter. There 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 167 

was a sudden hushed silence in the room ; then Lady 
Jane Willoughby, who had been tying her motor 
veil, took it off and folded it in her lap. The Staf- 
fords, Poppy and her mother, exchanged glances. 
Without in the least understanding it I saw that 
something psychological was happening. 

“Why not?’’ said Daphne quietly, looking around. 
“The house is still furnished, isn’t it, Violet? And 
I suppose you could get in?” 

Violet shrugged her shoulders. “I dare say; as 
I recall it, one could enter any one of the doors by 
merely leaning against it. The place is a million 
years old.” 

Everybody talked at once for a few minutes. I 
gave up trying to understand and took a fresh tea- 
cake. Then I noticed Lady Willoughby. In all 
that militant body, whatever adventure was afoot, 
hers was the only craven soul. She was picking at 
her veil with nervous fingers. 

“I — don’t you think it is very radical?” she ven- 
tured when she could be heard. Here Mrs. Stafford 
objected to the word “radical,” and she substituted 
“revolutionary.” “I should not wish anything to 
happen to him. He was a great friend of Willough- 
by’s mother while she lived.” 

“That’s all right among ourselves, Jane,” Mrs. 
Stafford put in, “but if I recall the circumstances I 


AFFINITIES 


168 

wouldn’t lay any emphasis on that. Anyhow, we 
don’t intend to murder the man.” 

Lady Jane was only partially reassured. “Of 
course, you wouldn’t mean to,” she retorted, “but 
there is no use asking me to forget what Poppy Staf- 
ford did to the president of the Board of Trade 
last summer.” 

Poppy glanced up and shook her curls. “You are 
envious, Willieboy,” she said, and put four lumps of 
sugar in her tea. “Willieboy” is Lady Willoughby’s 
affectionate diminutive. They had started the tea 
all over again and I rather edged away from Poppy, 
but Daphne said afterward it was only a matter of 
a chair Poppy threw from the gallery at a public 
meeting, and that the man it fell on was only a sec- 
retary to the president of the Board of Trade. 

Finally, I made out what the plan was, and 
mentally during the rest of the meeting I was making 
bags in jail. 

They were going to abduct the Prime Minister! 

Lady Jane had stopped looking back and had put 
her hand to the plow. (This sounds well, so I won’t 
cut it out; but wasn’t it Lot’s wife that looked back*? 
And wasn’t that before the day of plows ^ Or was 
it^) And it was she who finally settled the whole 
thing, for it seems that the P. M. had confided to 
Lord Willoughby that the town was so noisy with 
Suffragettes that he could not find a quiet spot for 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 160 


a rubber of bridge ; that since the balloon incident he 
slept in his clothes with the windows shut and 
locked; and that since the latest kitchen-maid had 
turned out to be the Honourable Maude Twombley, 
who slipped handbills into his entrees and served 
warnings in his dessert, he was going to travel, 
incognito and alone, to his daughter’s place, The 
Oaks, outside of West Newbury, and get a little 
sleep. 

And West Newbury was only four miles from the 
empty Harcourt Hall! In short, as Daphne suc- 
cinctly put it: “Our Jonah was about to jump 
voluntarily overboard from the ship of state into the 
whaleboned jaws of the Suffragette whale.” 

Everybody went mad at that point, but as they 
grew excited I got cold. It began with my toes and 
went all over me. 

Ernestine Sutcliffe stood on one of Daphne’s 
tulip-wood and marquetry chairs and made a speech, 
gesticulating with her cup and dripping tea on me. 
And then somebody asked me to stand up and say 
what I thought. (I have never really spoken in 
public, but I always second the motions in a little 
club I belong to at home. It is a current-events club 
— so much easier to get the news that way than to 
read the newspaper.) 

So I got up and made a short speech. I said : *T 
am only a feeble voice in this clamour of outraged 


AFFINITIES 


170 

womanhood against the oppressor, Man. I believe 
in the franchise for women, the ballot instead of the 
ballet. But at home, in America, when we want to 
take a bath we don’t jump off the Brooklyn Bridge 
into the East River to do it.” 

Then I sat down. Daphne was raging. 

“You are exceedingly vulgar,” she said, “but since 
you insist on that figure of speech, you in America 
have waited a long time for the bath, and if you 
continue your present methods you won’t get it be- 
fore you need it.” 

II 

Now that they had thought of it, they were all 
frantic for fear Mrs. Cobden-Fitzjames and the 
Woman’s Liberty League might think of it, too, 
kidnap the Prime Minister, and leave us a miserable 
president of the Local Government Board or a 
wretched under-secretary of something or other. 

The plan we evolved before the meeting broke up 
was to send a wire to Mrs. Gresham, the Premier’s 
daughter, that he had been delayed, and to meet a 
later train. Then, Daphne’s motor would meet the 
proper train — he was to arrive somewhere between 
seven and eight in the evening — carry his Impres- 
siveness to Harcourt Hall and deliver him into the 
hands of the enemy. As Violet Harcourt-Standish 
voiced it: the motor gone, the railway miles away. 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 171 

what can he do^ He will keep awake, because he 
will have slept in the train going down, and we can 
give him a cold supper. Nothing heavy to make him 
drowsy. Perhaps it would be better not to give him 
anything. (Hear! Hear!) Then, six speeches, each 
an hour long. At the end of that time we can prom- 
ise him something to eat and a machine to take him 
to West Newbury on one condition. Every one 
looked up. ‘He must sign an indorsement of Suf- 
frage for Women.” (Loud applause.) 

“Why not have a table laid,” I suggested, “and 
show it to him? Let him smell it, so to speak. 
Visualise your temptation. You know, — ‘And the 
devil ’ ” 

“This is the Prime Minister, Madge,” Daphne 
broke in shortly, “and you are not happy in your 
Scriptural references.” 

Things went along with suspicious smoothness. 
Daphne really took the onus of the whole thing, and, 
of course, I helped her. 

We all got new clothes, for everybody knows 
that if you can attract a man’s eye you can get and 
maybe hold his ear. And Daphne wrote a fresh 
speech, one she had thought out in jail. It began, 
“Words ! Words ! ! Words ! ! !” She wrote a poem, 
too, called the Song of the Vote, with the meter 
of the Song of a Shirt, and she wanted me to recite 
it, but even before I read it I refused. 


172 


AFFINITIES 


The gown Mother had ordered for me at Paquin’s 
on her way to the Riviera came just in time, a nice 
white thing over silver, with a square-cut neck and 
bits of sleeves made of gauze and silver fringe. 
Daphne got a pink velvet, although she is stout and 
inclined to be florid. She had jet butterflies em- 
broidered over it, a flight of them climbing up one 
side of her skirt and crawling to the opposite 
shoulder, so that if one stood off at a distance she 
had a curiously diagonal appearance, as if she had 
listed heavily to one side. 

By hurrying we got to Ivry on Thursday evening, 
and I was in a blue funk. Daphne was militantly 
cheerful, and, in the drawing-room after dinner, she 
put the finishing touches to her speech. It was 
warm and rainy, and I wandered aimlessly around, 
looking at hideous English photographs and won- 
dering if picking oakum in an English jail was worse 
than making bags — and if they could arrest me, 
after all. Could they touch an American citizen^ 
(But was I an American citizen^ Perhaps I should 
have been naturalised, or something of that kind!) 
And I thought of Mother at Florence, in the villa on 
the Via Michelangelo — Mother, who classes Suf- 
fragists with Anti-Vaccinationists and Theosophists. 

I would have gone up to bed, but that meant a 
candle and queer, shaky shadows on the wall; so I 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 173 


stayed with Daphne and looked at the picture of a 
young man in a uniform. 

“Basil Harcourt,” Daphne said absently, with a 
pen in her mouth, when I asked about it. “Taken 
years ago before he became an ass. How do you 
spell ‘Supererogation* 

“I haven’t an idea,” I admitted. “I don’t even 
know what it means. I always confuse it with 
‘eleemosynary’.” Daphne grunted. “Do you mean 
that this is Violet’s husband?” 

“It was — her first. Don’t ask me about him : he 
always gives me indigestion. The man’s mad ! He 
stood right in this room, where he had eaten my 
I ginger-cakes all his life and where he came to show 
i me his first Eton collar and Icmg trousers, and told 
me that he expected The Cause for his wife to be 
himself, and if she would rather raise hell for women 
than a family of children she would have to choose 
at once. And Violet stood just where you are, 

* Madge, and retorted that maternity was not a Cause, 
i and that any hen in the barnyard could raise a 
^ family. 

I “ ‘I suppose you want to crow,’ Basil said furi- 
t ously, and slammed out. He went to Canada very 
( soon after.” 

I “Then perhaps he won’t like our using his house 

i for such a purpose. If he isn’t in sympathy ” 

“Twaddle,” Daphne remarked, poising her pen 


AFFINITIES 


174 

to go on. “In the first place, it isn’t a house — it^s 
a rattletrap; and in the second place, he won’t know 
a thing about it.” 

It was all very tragic. I was thinking of them 
when I went out on the terrace in Daphne’s mackin- 
tosh. The air was damp and sticky, but it was bet- 
ter than Daphne’s conversation. I stood in the foun- 
tain court, leaning against a column and listening to 
the spray as it blew over on to the caladium leaves. 

I am not sure just when I saw the figure. First 
it was part of the gloom, a deeper shadow in the 
misty garden. I saw it, so to speak, out of the tail 
of my eye. When I looked directly there was noth- 
ing there. Finally, I called softly over my shoulder 
to Daphne, but she did not hear. Instead, the 
shadow disengaged itself, moved forward and re- 
solved into Bagsby, Daphne’s chauffeur. 

“I wasn’t sure at first that you saw me. Miss,” he 
said, touching his cap. “It's my turn until mid- 
night; Clarkson ’as it until three, and the gardener 
until daylight.” 

“Good gracious !” I gasped. “Do you mean you 
are guarding the house*?” 

“Perhaps it’s more what you would call surveil- 
lance,'’ he said cautiously, “the picture gallery being 
over your head. Miss, and an easy job from the 
conservatory roof. We ’aven’t told Miss Wynd- 
ham, yet. Miss, but the Wimberley Romney was 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 175 

stolen from the Towers last night, Miss, and the 
whole countryside is up/’ 

“The Romney*?” I inquired. “Do you mean a 
painting?’’ 

“Yes, Miss,” he said patiently. “Cut out of its 
frame, and worth twenty thousand pounds! By a 
gentlemanly-looking chap — a tourist by appear- 
ances, with a bicycle, in tweeds and knickers. Miss.” 

Whether the bicycle or the tourist wore tweeds 
and knickers was not entirely clear. Bagsby was 
saying that the thief was supposed to be hiding on 
the moor when Daphne came out, and he disap- 
peared. 

Poppy Stafford and Ernestine came unexpectedly 
late that night after I had gone to bed. I was in 
I my first sleep and dreaming that Poppy was brain- 
I ing Bagsby with a gilt-framed painting, and that he 
; was shouting “Votes for Women” instead of 
“ ’elp !” when somebody knocked at my door. It 
turned out to be Poppy, and she said she thought 
! there was a bat in her room, and as she was quite 
pallid with fright I let her get into my bed. I was 
full of my dream and I wanted to ask her some 
particulars about the man she had brained the sum- 
I mer before. But she put her head under the sheet, 
i and as soon as she stopped trembling she went to 
, sleep. 

i Daphne called me early and we went over to the 


176 


AFFINITIES 


Hall to take a look around. As Daphne said, it 
would be night and the grounds would not matter, 
but we would have to uncover some of the furniture. 
And as we could not let the servants know, we had 
to do it ourselves. We took a brush and pan, and 
tore up a linen sheet to dust with. Bagsby, who had 
been bribed, and suspected what he wasn’t told, got 
the brush and pan, and later he showed us a pail and 
a piece of soap in the tonneau. 

The place was dreadful. No doubt the park had 
been lovely, but it was overshadowed and over- 
grown. The hedges were untrimmed; paths began, 
wandered around and died in a mess of under- 
growth ; and the terrace had lost an end in a wilder- 
ness where a garden-house was falling to decay. The 
fading outlines of the kitchen garden seemed to 
shout aloud of lost domesticity, and over every- 
thing lay a sodden layer of the previous autumn’s 
leaves. (For fear I am accused of plagiarism, the 
sentence about the kitchen garden is not original. 
Madge.) 

Daphne had got a key somewhere, and inside it 
was worse. Coverings over the pictures and furni- 
ture, six years’ dust everywhere, and a smell of 
mould like a crypt of one of the Continental cathe- 
drals, only not so ancestor-y. While we were tak- 
ing off the covers, with Bagsby’s help. Daphne 
alternately sang and coughed in the dust. 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 177 


“Why aren’t you more cheerful?” she demanded. 
“It will be a red-letter day for The Cause. When I 
think of Mabel Fitzjames I almost weep!” 

“I think it must be because I am not used to it,” 
I said meekly. “You see, I come from a Republican 
country — and Democratic, too, of course — and we 
don’t have any Prime Ministers to steal. One has 
to grow accustomed to things like this gradually, 

I Daffie, or be born to them. And then — I lay awake 
most of last night, wondering what would happen 
if he didn’t — er — see the joke, you know.” 

Daphne jerked a cover from a moth-eaten sofa 
! and sneezed promptly in the dust. 

“Joke!” she repeated when she could speak. “No, 
I don’t think he will see the joke. In fact, I don’t 
believe he will think there is any joke to see. If I 
know anything, he is going to be wild. He’s going 
to tear his hair and throw the vases off the mantel. 
He’s going to use language that you never heard — 
: at least, I hope not.” 

It was then that I realised that I was not, heart 
and soul, a Suffragist. If I had only had the cour- 
age to have spoken up then, to have told her that I 
didn’t feel The Cause the way I ought to, and that 
I hoped to get married and have dozens of children, 
and that, anyhow, I had a headache and I thought 
I ought to go on to Italy and meet Mother! But, 
instead, I followed her around like a sheep, tacking 


AFFINITIES 


178 

up cards with Suffrage mottoes on them all over the 
drawing-room, and stretching a long canvas banner 
in the hall across the back of a great Gothic hall- 
seat, with “Votes for Women” in red letters on it. 

Bagsby brushed out a sort of oasis in the middle 
of the drawing-room and a path to the door, and 
Daphne and I dusted seven chairs and a table. We 
had brought over a duplex lamp and some candles, 
and when we had put a cover on the table the middle 
of the room looked quite habitable. Then Bagsby 
brushed the leaves off the steps, and as Daphne 
pleasantly expressed it : 

Won't you step into my parlor? 

Said the spider to the fly. 

Mrs. Stafford, Violet and Lady Jane arrived that 
afternoon, after having waited to send the wire on 
which the conspiracy was hung. They put them- 
selves into negligees and the hands of their maids at 
once, and were still dressing when Ernestine and I, 
the advance guard, started with the hamper of cold 
supper at half after six. Things went wrong from 
that moment. 

Ernestine started to recite her speech to me as we 
went down the drive, found she had forgotten every- 
thing but the first sentence, which began, like The 
Walrus and the Carpenter, “The time ha? 
come ” and had to go back for the manuscript. 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 179 

We had to leave her for the second trip. Bagsby, 
who was in the conspiracy to the extent of five 
pounds, took me over alone and lighted the duplex 
lamp. He cut the telephone wire, also, by Daphne’s 
order, before he left. We were not leaving anything 
to chance, although the thing had probably been dis- 
connected for years. 

‘1 ’ardly like to leave you ’ere alone. Miss,” he 
said when everything was ready. It was growing 
dark by that time and raining again. “Folks is al- 
ways ready to give a hempty ’ouse a black eye, so to 
speak. The ’All ghost isn’t what you might call 
authenticated, but the ’ouse isn’t ’abitable for a lady 
alone, Miss.” 

“I am not at all nervous,” I quavered as he went 
down the steps. “Only — please tell them to hurry, 
Bagsby.” 

I called to him again as he climbed into the car. 

“Oh, Bagsby,” I said nervously, “I — I suppose 
there is no danger of the picture thief being around.” 

“Not for pictures, anyhow, Miss,” he returned 
jocularly, and started off. 

Not for pictures^ anyhow! 

I stood at the door and watched the tail light of 
the motor disappear down the drive, show for an 
instant a spark by the dilapidated lodge and then 
go out entirely. 


180 


AFFINITIES 


The second part of the story begins about here. 
The first part, as you have seen, has been purely 
political: the rest is romance, intermingled with 
crime. It is a little late to bring in a hero, but to 
have done it earlier would have spoiled the story, 
besides being distinctly untruthful. And I suppose 
a real novelist would have had the hero turn out to 
be the sunburned gentleman of some pages before; 
but the fact is he wasn’t, and I never saw the sun- 
burned gentleman again. 

Well, after Bagsby left, and I had examined the 
supper in the hamper and lighted more candles in 
the drawing-room, I began to wish we had not cut 
the telephone wire so soon. It was perfectly dark, 
and any one could step in through the windows — 
open to air the house — and cut my throat and take 
my string of pearls which Father had had matched 
for me and walk away calmly and be safe ten feet 
from the house in the undergrowth. And then 
Bagsby’s ghost began to walk in my mind and I 
quite lost sight of the fact that it was not authenti- 
cated. 

It was blowing by that time, and every joint of 
the rheumatic old house creaked and groaned. The 
candles flickered and nearly went out, and the motto 
cards began to fly around the room as if carried by 
invisible fingers. One of them said, “You have 
been weighed and found wanting,” and another one, 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 181 


“Beware!"’ They had all the effect of spirit mes- 
sages on me. When I tried to close the windows I 
found them stuck in their dilapidated frames. I 
wanted desperately to hide in a corner behind one 
of the high-backed chairs, but it was dusty there 
and hardly dignified for a person who was abducting 
the Prime Minister. And then it would be ignomini- 
ous to faint there and have some one peer over the 
back and say: “Why, here she is!” 

So, to divert my mind from ghosts and gentle- 
men burglars who steal pictures, I began to investi- 
gate the hamper. There were pate and salad and 
sandwiches and quite a lot of stuff. But all at once 
I remembered that Daphne had given me the small 
silver and that I had laid it on my bed and left it 
there. And most of the provisions were too messy 
for a P. M. to manage with his fingers. Luckily, I 
remembered something Violet had said when Daphne 
gave me the silver. 

“Personally,” she had announced, “I am not in 
favor of feeding him at all. Or else I would give 
him prison fare. But if you’re going to be mushy 
over him you’ll probably find some dishes and forks 
in a little closet over the dining-room fire-place. 
They were kept there to use if Basil ever went down 
for the shooting, and I dare say they are still there.” 

So I picked up a candle and trembled through 
the darkness toward where the breakfast-room ought 


182 


AFFINITIES 


to be. I went through a square garden-hall which 
shook when I did, and the motor coat around my 
shoulders made the shadow of a pirate on the wall. 

I found the breakfast-room and the mantel cup- 
board at last, and, putting the candle on a chair, 
stood for a moment listening, my hands clapped over 
my heart. I thought I heard some one walking over 
bare boards near by, but the sounds, whatever they 
were, ceased. 

The mantel cupboard was locked. I pulled and 
twisted at the knob to no purpose. Finally, I dug 
at the lock with a hairpin, and something gave; the 
door swung open with a squeak, and a moment later 
I had a flannel case in my hands and was taking out 
some silver forks. At that moment a plate in the 
cupboard fell forward with a slam, and something 
leaped on to the forks, which I dropped with a crash. 
The candle went out immediately and, gasping for 
breath, I backed against the cupboard and stood 
staring into the blackness of the room. 

The door by which I had entered was a faint, yel- 
lowish rectangle from the distant hall lamp. That 
is, it had been a rectangle. It was partly obscured 
now. And gradually the opacity took on the height 
and breadth and general outline of a man. He was 
pointing a revolver at me! 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 183 


III 

I think it occurred to him then that I might be 
pointing something at him — not knowing that my 
deadliest weapon was a silver fork. For he slid in- 
side the room with his back against the wall. And 
there we stood, backed against opposite corners, 
staring into the darkness, and I, for one, totally un- 
able to speak. Finally, he said : “I think it will end 
right here.” 

“I — I don’t know what you mean,” I quavered, 
for I was plainly expected to say something. There 
was another total silence, which I learned afterward 
was inability on his part to speak. Then 

“By Jove!” he exclaimed; and then again, under 
his breath: “By Jove!” 

(That assured me somewhat. “By Jove” is so 
largely a gentleman's exclamation. If he had said 
“Blow me,” which is English lower class, or “Shiver 
my timbers,” I know I should have shivered mine. 
But “By Jove” gave me courage.) 

He fumbled for and lighted a match then, and 
took a step forward. We had a ghastly glimpse of 
each other before the match went out, and I saw he 
was in tweeds and knickers^ and had one of Daphne’s 
sandwiches in his left hand. He saw the candle then 
and, stepping forward, he lighted it where it stood 


AFFINITIES 


184 

on the chair. And when he had lighted it and put 
it on the table he actually smiled across it. 

am not sure yet that I am awake/’ he said 
easily. “Please don’t disappear. The sandwich 
seems real enough, but that’s the way in dreams. 
You find something delectable and wake up before 
you taste it. You see, the sandwich is gone al- 
ready.” 

“You dropped it,” I said as calmly as I could. 

“Oh,” he said, lowering the candle and peering 
under the table. “Ah, here it is. So it isn’t a dream ! 
You have no idea how many times I have dreamed I 
was finding money — sovereigns, you know, and all 
that — and wakened at the psychological moment.” 
He put his revolver on the table, took a bite of the 
sandwich and stared at me, at my gown, and then at 
my pearls. I fancied his eyes gleamed. 

I did not speak ; I was listening with all my might 
for the car, but I could hear nothing but the patter 
of the rain on the flagstones outside. 

“I’m afraid I have startled you,” he went on, still 
looking at me with uncomfortable intentness. “The 
fact is, I was asleep. I got in through a window an 
hour or so ago after a day and a night on the moor. 
I had no idea there was anybody here until you 
brushed past me in the dark.” 

The moor ! Then of course I knew. It had been 
dawning on me slowly. For all I could tell, he might 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 185 


have had the Romney under his coat at that moment. 
I put my hands to my throat for air because, al- 
though he was smiling and pleasant enough, every- 
body knows that the bigger the game a burglar 
makes a specialty of the more likely he*is to look and 
act like a gentleman. So, because he seemed to ex- 
pect me to do something, I unclasped my collar 
with shaking fingers and threw it to him across the 
table. 

‘Dh, please take it and go away,” I implored him. 
“It — it isn’t imitation, anyhow, and Daphne says — 
the Romney was.” 

“Oh,” he said slowly, staring at the pearls, “so 
Daphne says the Romney was, eh^” 

He ran the collar through his fingers as if his con- 
science was troubling him a little. Then, “I wouldn’t 
care to pit my judgment against that of a lady,” he 
went on without even a word about the collar, “but 
• — I think your friend Daphne is wrong.” His eyes 
travelled comprehensively to the silver on the floor. 

“If you don’t mind,” he said whimsically — (this 
seems the only word, although — can a burglar be 
whimsical*?) — “I wish you would tell me how you 
opened that cupboard door. It was locked an hour 
ago.” 

“I dare say it was very unprofessional,” I said 
boldly — for he didn’t show any sign of trying to 


186 


AFFINITIES 


choke me, and my courage was returning, “but — I 
did it with a hairpin.” 

“Ah!” He was thoughtful. “And — I suppose 
that is the way you opened the front entry door, 
also^?” 

“No. Violet had a key ” I began. Then I 

stopped, furious at myself. 

He dropped the sandwich again and took a step 
forward with his eyes narrowed. 

“Violet!” he said. 

It seems extraordinary, looking back, to think I 
could have mistaken him for a theif when he was 
something else altogether. But that wasn’t the only 
mistake I made. I could scream when I remember 
He was not at all like his picture, and because I 
hadn’t recognised him as Basil Harcourt, who hated 
The Cause, I had lost quantities of valuable time. 

One thinks quickly in emergencies, and women 
have one advantage over men. They can think very 
hard while they are talking about an entirely dif> 
ferent subject. His next question gave me a cue. 
He came forward and leaned on the table, near the 
candle. I could see he was not very old after all — 
not nearly so old as I had expected. 

“I know it isn’t my affair at all,” he began, half 
smiling, “but — I am under the impression that the 
Hall has been closed for some years. And yet — I 
find a young woman here alone, surrounded by — 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 187 


er — dust and decay. It’s a sort of reversed Sleep- 
ing Beauty and the Prince. You should have been 
asleep. As you say, it isn’t my affair, but — what in 
the world brought you here*?” 

(When I told this afterward Poppy said: ‘‘It 
rounds exactly like him, of course.”) 

“I came to steal the silver,” I said brazenly. 

That was my plan, you see. If he would only 
take me away and give me in charge he would be 
safely out of the way and beyond interfering. And 
the next morning, when everything was over, I 
would tell my real name and be released, and every- 
thing would be over. Something had to be done at 
once, for, as Daphne said, “to kidnap the Prime 
Minister would be a coup d'etat^ but to try to do it 
and fail would be low comedy.” 

When I said I was stealing the silver, which was 
certainly not worth five guineas, Mr. Harcourt took 
a step back and caught hold of a chair. 

“Really!” he said. And then: “But what in the 
world did you intend doing with it? — if you don’t 
mind the question.” 

This was unexpected, but I rose to the occasion. 

“Melt it,” I declared. I thought this was in- 
spired. Don’t they always melt down stolen 
silver? 

“By Jove!” he exclaimed. “You are experi- 
enced!” Then he sat down suddenly in the chair 


188 AFFINITIES 

and coughed very Hard into his handkerchief. But 
he made no move to arrest me. 

“Aren’t you going to give me in charged” I asked 
in alarm, for time was flying. He put away his 
handkerchief. 

“Wouldn’t that be a horrible thing for me to 
dof he asked gravely. “Perhaps it’s your first of- 
fence, you know, although I doubt that. You seem 
so capable And if I let you go you may reform. 
Take my word for it, there’s nothing to a life of 
crime I suppose you — er — appropriated the string 
of pearls that are not imitation^” 

This was unexpected. 

“It is mine, honestly mine, Mr. Harcourt,” I be- 
gan. He glanced at me when I called him by name. 
Then he took the collar out and looked at it. “I 
shall advertise it,” he said judicially and slid it 
back into his pocket. “If the owner offers a reward 
I will see that you get it — ^minus the newspaper 
costs, of course.” 

Then — we both heard it at the same moment — 
there came the throb of the machine down the drive. 
He raised his eyebrows and glanced at me. “More 
people after the silver, probably,” he said, and picked 
up the candle. I slipped after him to the entrance 
hall. 

Just inside the door, with a cordial smile of greet- 
ing fading into a blank, stood a middle-aged Eng- 


THE BORR OWED HOUSE 189 

lish gentleman, rather florid, with a drooping, sandy 
mo^^'^'-nche and thinnish hair. When he saw me the 
ghost of the smile returned. 

“I am sure I beg your pardon. A — a thousand 
apologies. That cursed — hem — the chauffeur has 
made a beastly mistake. I was led to believe — I — 
that is ” 

He was staring at me. Then his eye struck the 
banner across the hall, with ‘‘Votes for Women’’ on 
it, and from there it travelled to Mr. Harcourt. He 
had grown visibly paler. He put a hand to his tweed 
travelling-cap, gave it a jerk and, turning without 
warding, he disappeared through the entry into the 
storm. I caught Mr. Harcourt by the arm as he was 
about to follow, muttering savagely. 

“Oh, he’s going to run away,” I wailed. “And he 
will take pneumonia or something like that, and die ! 
I told Daphne how it would be!” Mr. Harcourt 
ran down the steps. “Sir George! Sir George!” 
I called desperately into the darkness from the door- 
way. There was no answer, but Mr. Harcourt 
stopped and glanced back from the drive. 

“Sir George!” he exclaimed. “What do you 
mean ‘?” 

“It’s the Prime Minister,” I called desperately, 
“and if you care anything at all about Violet — but, 
of course, you don’t — oh, do find him and bring him 
back!” 


190 AFFINITIES 

(Nothing but the excitement of the occasion 
would have made me mention Violet to him. I was 
sorry on the instant, for Mother knew a man once 
who had a fainting spell every time he heard his di- 
vorced wife’s name, and the only way they could 
revive him was by sprinkling him with lilac water, 
which had been her favourite perfume. Very ro- 
mantic, I think. But there was nothing but rain to 
sprinkle on Mr. Harcourt, even if he had taken a 
fit, which he didn’t.) 

Instead, he turned on his heel and started down 
the drive. Sir George had disappeared, and the en- 
gine of the motor car had given a final throb and 
died in the distance. Sounds of feet splashing 
through mud and water came back to me. 

For ten minutes I cowered on that miserable 
settee, with “Votes for Women” over my head. And 
I remembered America, and the way I was always 
sheltered there, and nobody even thinking of kid- 
napping the Cabinet. The President being the whole 
thing anyhow and always guarded by secret service 
men. And besides, imagine abducting nine men! 
Or is it seven? 

After eternities I heard voices outside and Mr. 
Harcourt appeared, half leading, half coaxing Sir 
George. He had him by the arm. The Prime Min- 
ister was oozing mud and he was very pale. 

“Terrible!” he was saying. “Unbelievable! Is 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 191 


there anything they won’t do!” Then he caught a 
glimpse of the seven chairs and the gavel on the 
drawing-room table, and tried to bolt again. But 
the entry door was closed. 

“Now, then,” Mr. Harcourt said to me disagree- 
ably. “Tell us what you know about this thing. 
It isn’t an accident, I presume"?” 

I shook my head. 

“You see, sir,” he said to the P. M., “you are 
the centre — the storm centre — of a Suffragette plot 
of some sort. I was a fool not to have guessed it, but 

I actually thought Well, no matter what I 

thought. I presume you were going to Gresham 
Place"?” 

Sir George nodded and groaned. A terrible flash 
of lightning was followed almost instantly by a 
splintering crash. The very house rocked. Mr. 
Harcourt closed the door. 

“This is Harcourt Hall,” he explained. “It’s in 
bad shape, but we have at least a roof. I think you 
are alone"?” to me very curtly. 

I nodded mutely. 

“I fancy the best thing under the circumstances 
is to wire to Gresham Place, and have them send 
a car over — providing the telephone is in order.” 

“The wire is cut,” I broke in. And then, like the 
poor thing I am, I began to cry. I hate lightning. It 
always makes me nervous. 


192 


AFFINITIES 


Both Sir George and Mr. Harcourt stared at me 
helplessly. And then, still sniffling, I told them the 
whole story, and how Daphne and the rest would 
soon be there, and that I wasn’t really a Suffragette ; 
that I was an American, and I thought women ought 
to vote, but be ladylike and proper about it, and 
that, at least, they ought to be school directors, be- 
cause they understood little children so well and 
paid taxes, anyhow. 

When I got through and looked up at them Sir 
George was staring at me in bewilderment and Mr. 
Harcourt was smiling broadly. 

“My dear young lady,” he said, “of course you 
ought to vote. And if voting went by general at- 
tractiveness you would have to be what Americans 
call a repeater — vote twice, you know.” 

(It was at this point, when I told the story, that 
Ernestine Sutcliffe looked contemptuous. “We are 
not all pretty puppets,” she said. And I retorted: 
“No, I should say not!”) 

All this had taken longer than it sounds, for on 
the very tail of Mr. Harcourt’s speech came a double 
honk from the drive. Mr. Harcourt jumped for the i 
hall lamp and extinguished it in an instant. I j 
hardly know what happened next. My eyes were | 
still staring wide into the blackness when he reached I 
over and clutched me by the shoulder. I 

I 

“Not a word, please,” he ordered. “This way, i 

j 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 193 


Sir George! The door is bolted, and we will have 
time to get upstairs and hide. There’s a secret room, 
if I can remember how to get to it. Walk lightly.” 

I could hear Daphne at the door outside and I 
opened my mouth to scream. But Mr. Harcourt di- 
vined my intention and clapped a hand over it. 

As I was half led, half dragged back through the 
dark hall I saw Violet enter by one of the windows. 

IV 

We got upstairs somehow, with Sir George breath- 
ing in gasps. I realised then that Mr. Harcourt was 
still supporting me and I freed myself with a jerk, 
on which he coolly took my hand and led the way 
along the musty hall. Once or twice boards creaked 
and the two men stopped in alarm. But no one 
heard. From below came a babel of high, excited 
voices and the crash of an overturned chair. I backed 
against the wall and held my hands out defensively 
in front of me. 

‘How dare you carry me off like this!” I de- 
manded when I could speak. ‘T am going back!” 

But Mr. Harcourt blocked the passage with his 
broad shoulders and struck a match cautiously. First 
he looked at the walls, then he glanced at me. 

“My dear young lady,” he said curtly, “we should 
be only too happy to leave you — ^but you know 


194 AFFINITIES 


too much.” Then, to Sir George : “I must have taken 
a wrong turn,” he whispered ruefully. “There ought 
to be a wainscoting here. Good Heavens! I be- 
lieve they are coming up.” 

We could hear Daphne calling “Madge!” 
frantically from the lower stairs. And suddenly I 
was ashamed of the whole affair: of myself, for 
lending myself to it; of Violet, for thrusting the man 
beside me out of her life and then stooping to bor- 
row his house; of Poppy, for braining a man with 
a chair and then being afraid of a bat. I turned to 
Mr. Harcourt as the footsteps ran up the stairs. 

“The door at the end of the corridor is partly 
open,” I whispered. “We may be able to lock it 
behind us.” 

With that we I shifted my allegiance. From that 
moment my sole object was to get the Prime Min- 
ister of Great Britain back to his family, his friends 
and his Sovereign without injury. 

We scurried down the hall and closed the door be- 
hind us. It did not lock ! But there was no time to 
go elsewhere. We stood just inside the door, breath- 
ing hard, and listened. For a time the search con- 
fined itself to the lower floor. Mr. Plarcourt struck 
another match and looked around him. 

We were in a huge, old-fashioned bedroom with 
mullioned windows and panelled walls. The furni- 
ture was carefully covered, and the carpet had been 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 195 

folded and wrapped in the centre of the floor. I sat 
down on it in a perfectly exhausted condition. 

Mr. Harcourt stood with his back against the 
door and we all listened. But the search had not 
penetrated to our wing. Sir George was breathing 
heavily and mopping his head. The air was stiffling. 

'Tm awfully sorry,’’ said Mr. Harcourt cautious- 
ly; “I could have sworn I had taken the right turn. 
If I remember rightly there was a passage from the 
Refuge Chamber down to the garden. How many 
women are downstairs*?” 

‘‘Six,” I whispered, “and I suppose Poppy Staf- 
ford would count as two. She almost killed a man 
last year.” When Sir George heard Poppy’s name 
he began to fumble with the window-lock. “And, 
of course,” I went on, “your — I mean — Violet 
knows the house perfectly.” 

“If we could get out of here,” Mr. Harcourt re- 
flected, “we could get down to the lodge scnnehow. 
Then, when the motor comes back we could stop it 
at the gates — have them closed, you know — and 
when the chauffeur gets out to open them steal the 
car.” 

Sir George relaxed perceptibly. “A valuable sug- 
gestion,” he said almost cheerfully. But suddenly I 
had turned cold. 

“Most valuable,” I said from the darkness, “save 


196 


AFFINITIES 


for one thing: Mr. Harcourt has forgotten, no doubt, 
but there are no gates at the lodge 

He gave a quick movement in the darkness. 
^‘Then we will have to manage without gates,’’ he 
said quite calmly. ‘"I had forgotten, for the mo- 
ment, that they had been taken down. What’s the 
conundrum? When is a gate not a gate?” 

But his lightness did not reassure me. Why had 
he taken the wrong turning in his own house? And 
what man in his senses would forget whether his 
own lodge had gates or not ! But there was no time 
to puzzle it out. The search had abandoned the 
hrst floor and was coming up the stairs. The Prime 
Minister threw open the window. From down the 
hall came a babel of voices and Daphne’s soap-box 
and monument voice. ‘‘I think I had better tell 
you,” she was saying ‘‘that Violet and I have found 
traces of two men — ^muddy footprints that lead up 
the stairs. Bagsby says he brought Sir George alone. 
I do not hazard a guess, but — ^something unforeseen 

has happened. I only hope Here she broke 

off, and there was a rattle of metallic objects that 
sounded like brass fire-irons. 

The search came our way slowly but certainly. I 
sat on my carpet and shivered. Mr. Harcourt stood 
braced against the door, and Sir George had got the 
window open and was testing the roof of a conserva- 
tory with his foot. Footsteps came down the hall 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 197 

and we sat motionless. I remembered suddenly that 
somebody always sneezed at crises like these, and 
then I realised inevitably that I was going to be the 
person. Somewhere I had heard that if you hold 
your breath and swallow at the psychological mo- 
ment you may sneeze silently. So I tried it in 
desperation and almost strangled, and felt very 
queer about the ears for an hour after. And at the 
best there was some sound, for the footsteps outside 
turned and ran toward the stairs, where there was a 
hurried colloquy. 

At that, Sir George put the other foot over the 
I windowsill, and in a moment we were all in head- 
long flight. Luckily, the very top of the conserva- 
tory was boarded on top of the glass, but it began 
to slope sooner than I had expected, and I lost my 
hold on Sir George’s hand and slid without warning. 
I landed on the ground below, standing up to my 
waist in shmbbery and very much jarred. Sir George 
was not so lucky. He put a foot through a pane of 
I glass with a terrible crash, and it took all of Mr. 

' Harcourt’s strength to release him. Standing below, 
I could see a flare of light in the room we had just 
left, and the silhouettes of the two men struggling on 
: the roof. Somebody came to the window just as we 
( were united on the soggy ground. I think it was 
j Violet, but the crash of the rain on the glass of the 
conservatory had covered the noise of our escape. 


198 AFFINITIES 

Mr. Harcourt picked me out of my bush and we 
darted into the shrubbery. 

V 

I have only a sketchy recollection of what fol- 
lowed. The rain beat on my face and my bare 
shoulders; the drive was a river. Once some one 
came to the entry door of the Hall behind us and 
waved a lamp, which the wind promptly ex- 
tinguished. And on either side of me, in gloomy 
silence, ploughed the Prime Minister and Mr. Har- 
court. Once Sir George left the drive, seeking bet- 
ter walking on the turf, and came back after a mo- 
ment with a brief statement that he had collided 
with a tree and had loosened a tooth. And twice 
Mr. Harcourt touched my elbow to guide me and 
I shook him off. 

He got into the gatekeeper’s house through a win- 
dow and opened the door for us. The interior was 
desolate enough, but it was at least dry. Mr. Har- 
court produced a candle from his pocket, evidently 
from the room we had left, and it revealed two 
packing-cases, one small keg, and a collection of 
straw and rubbish in a corner. It also showed that 
Sir George had struck his nose and that it was bleed- 
ing profusely. I got a glimpse, too, of the wreck of 
my gown, and that and the blood together brought 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 199 


my responsibility for the whole thing home to me. 
I sat down on the keg and buried my face in my 
hands. 

When I looked up again a fire was crackling on 
the hearth and Sir George’s boots were steaming in 
front of it. Mr. Harcourt had taken off his coat 
and was drying it. The smell of wet woollen cloth 
filled the air. He smiled at me over his shoulder. 

“This is for you,” he said cheerfully. “Go into 
the back room and strip off that draggled gown and 
put this on.” 

“I’m very well as I am,” I said, and shivered. 

“Nonsense !” He came over to me and held out 
the coat. “That white satin is saturated. Don’t be 
idiotic. This is certainly no time to stand on 
propriety.” 

“I — I can't,” I stammered. 

“Now, look here,” he persisted. “Fve got sisters 
— lots of ’em, and Sir George is a grandfather. Put 
this on over your petticoat.” 

Now, of course, anybody who knows anything 
about clothing today knows that petticoats don’t be- 
long with it. And even if they did, there were about 
eighty-seven hooks on the back of my gown, and only 
four that I could reach. 

“I am very comfortable as I am,” I said stub- 
bornly. “Please don’t bother about me. I sha’n’t 
make any change.” 


AFFINITIES 


200 

He flung the coat angrily on to a box and turned 
his back squarely on me. It was maddening to have 
him think me some prudish little schoolgirl who 
would say limbs for legs, and who, after showing 
them for years in very short frocks, suddenly puts 
on her first long gown and is for denying she has 
any limbs — that is, legs. Sir George sneezed and 
drew a long, shuddering breath. 

“Terrible!” he said. “This is what comes of 
admitting women to the universities. Would any 
man in his senses believe that such a situation as this 
is real^” 

Nobody answered. Sir George was inspecting the 
inner room. I had gone to the window, and after a 
moment Mr. Harcourt joined me there. The thunder, 
which had ceased, was commencing again, and a 
blue- white flash threw out the landscape. It showed 
a long stretch of country road, running with mad 
little streams of yellow water, the drive curving past 
and flowing a dignified tributary into the lane, and 
it revealed something else. The lodge gates were 
there^ opened hack against the shrubbery! Under 
cover of the noise I turned to my companion. 

“Who are you*?” I demanded under my breath. 
“You are not Basil Harcourt! You had no more 
right to be in that house than I had.” 

“Save the right of sanctuary,” he returned, look- 
ing at me oddly. “I got in through the chapel. 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 201 


i And what does it matter, anyhow? It is enough for 
me just now that you are you and I am V 

“You are flippant,’’ I retorted cautiously. ‘‘Why 
did you say you had had the gates taken down when 
they are still there, opened against the hedge?” 

“Jove! That’s a piece of luck,” he exclaimed, 
without troubling to explain. “Why in the world 
did you say there were no gates?” 

He opened the door and ran out into the storm. 
A moment later I saw him testing the hinges, and I 
flung away from the window. Before he came back 
he had closed the outer shutters. 

I Sir George had taken off his mackintosh and cap 
I and, with a candle and a deck of cards, was pre- 
I paring for solitaire on the top of the keg. The 
candle-light struck full on his face and showed his 
sandy moustache hanging limp and dejected, while 
little beads of moisture showed between the thin 
hair brushed across the top of his head. He was 
more nervous than he would have had us know, and 
the hands — very fine, long-fingered hands they were 
? — that laid out the cards were trembling noticeably. 

‘ At every sound he raised his head and stared at the 
door, and his arched, patrician nose would have been 
pinched if it had not been so swollen. I shuddered 
; with remorse every time I looked at him. His right 
, trouser was torn to ribbons from the knee down, and 
soon after our arrival he had disappeared into the 


AFFINITIES 


202 

rear room and emerged, bandaged with his spare 
handkerchiefs, and limping. 

We sat there for two hours^ Sir George pretend- 
ing to play, I huddled on a box by the fire, and The 
Unknown across the hearth from me, stretched on 
the floor, and leaning on his elbows and whistling 
softly. Sometimes he looked at me and sometimes at 
the fire, and once or twice I found him watching 
Sir George with a curiously meditative gaze. I 
could not help wondering if he was thinking what a 
chance for ransom there would be if he could hold 
the two of us prisoner for a time. 

(For story purposes, it is a pity he did not. What 
a novel it would have made ! The whole House of 
Lords out searching for us, and the Premier and my- 
self living in a cave, with our captor sitting at the en- 
trance with a gun across his knees ! ) 

After two hours of cards and steaming before the 
fire Sir George became drowsy. He yawned prodigi- 
ously, apologised to me thickly, and when the candle 
finally burned out he put his head on top of the keg 
and was asleep immediately. Not a sound had come 
from the Hall; everything was quiet except for a 
drip from the leaking roof, that splashed in a corner. 

Then: 

“If you please,” I said in a small voice, “may I 
have my necklace now^?” 

The Unknown turned quickly and glanced at Sir 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 203 


George, but he was noisily asleep. Then he edged 
over along the hearth until he was almost at my 
feet. 

‘T was going to advertise them,” he said in an 
undertone. “Possibly you recall my fair offer. 
Some poor woman is probably having a serious ill- 
ness at this minute because her pearls have been — 
er — appropriated.” 

“I don’t feel a particle ill,” I said stubbornly, 
“but I want them back. They belong to me. What 
are you going to do with them?” 

“ ‘Melt them down and sell them,’ ” he quoted 
easily. “Or dissolve them in vinegar and swallow 
them. That’s historic, anyhow.” 

“There is a better Biblical precedent,” I said and 
stopped, furious at myself. He was an ordinary 
highwayman masquerading as a gentleman, and for 
all I knew he might at that very minute have had 
the stolen Romney sewed around him like a cuirass. 
(He did hold himself very erect, now I thought of 
it.) And I had allowed his debonair manner to 
carry me away. 

But he did not give me a chance to snub him, for 
the next moment he was speaking gravely in an 
undertone and looking directly in my eyes. I will 
say he had a most misleadingly frank expression. 

“I will give them to you when you are safely 
back at Ivry,” he said, “and not one moment before. 


204 


AFFINITIES 


I am sure Sir George would agree with me that they 
are too valuable for a young girl to wear under the 
circumstances. I will give you my word, if it is 
worth anything to you.” 

“And if I will not take it?” 

“It would make no difference,” he replied im- 
perturbably, and leaned over to replenish the fire. 

Sir George slept on noisily ; the drip in the corner 
had become a splash; my white satin slippers be- 
fore the fire were drying into limp shapelessness. 
The man in tweeds on the floor raised himself into 
a sitting position and listened, his hands clasped 
about his knees. 

(Knickers with a man are like decolletage with a 
woman, only to be worn by the elect. Mother wishes 
me to cut this out, because she says this story is to 
be read by young persons. But the modern young 
person is really awfully sophisticated. Sometimes I 
feel as though mother is a mere child, compared to 
me.) 

After a time the man in knickers who was one 
of the elect dropped on his elbow and began to talk 
again, looking into the fire. 

“Rum affair altogether, isn’t it?” he said chattily. 
“Nature having a spasm outside, half a dozen lady 
votaries of the vote having spasms up at the house, 
the — er — Premier of Great Britain, on whose posses- 
sions the sun never sets, having apoplexy on a pack- 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 205 

ing-case. And out of all this chaos a moment like 
this: you and I alone here, where I could reach out 
my hand and touch you — if I dared he sup- 

plemented as I straightened. “You see, you have 
gone to my head. You are the most beautiful per- 
son I have ever seen.” 

One could tell that, however low he had fallen, 
he had been properly raised — although I think fire- 
light is always becoming, especially with a white 
gown. 

Here Sir George began to rouse. He coughed 
huskily, sat up and looked around him in a daze, 
and then stretched out his legs and groaned. 

“Gad!” he said with a deep breath, “I hoped I 
had dreamed it.” He looked at us both as if to 
establish our reality, and, reaching over, began to 
struggle into his shrunken boots. 

“If the storm has subsided,” he said, stamping 
his foot in an endeavour to get his heel down where 
it belonged, “I think I shall be going on. This 
place is damp.” 

“Not half so damp as the road,” objected the 
other man. “It’s a matter of miles, you know; and 
besides, I imagine we are going to have another 
storm. Listen !” 

The distant rumble of thunder had been coming 
\ closer to us. The rain had almost stopped, but, as 
Sir George opened the door, over the ominous still- 


206 


AFFINITIES 


ness flashed a terrific fork of lightning, followed in- 
stantly by a crash near at hand. A blue-white streak 
ran down the bole of a tree across the road. The 
thunder that followed echoed and re-echoed above 
our heads as we faced each other in the firelight. Sir 
George had closed the door precipitately, but, as 
the noise died away, he jammed his cap over his 
ears and resolutely prepared for flight. 

Argument had no effect on him. Whatever had 
caused his sudden change of mind, he was deter- 
mined to leave at once. I was panic-stricken. He 
had been my patent of respectability so far in what 
was, to say the least, an unconventional situation. 
But to have him go like that and leave me there 
with an ordinary thief, even if he did look like a 
Greek god except his nose, which was modern — (I 
do not like those old Greek noses, anyhow ; they be- 
gin so far up on the forehead) — to have him leave 
me like that was dreadful. 

However, there came an interruption just then, 
a splashing of horses’ feet along the road and the 
sound of men’s voices. They halted just outside the 
gates and we caught a word here and there: “Gre- 
sham Place,” and “Automobile,” and one sentence 
that stuck in my mind and brought me a picture of 
myself in a hideous prison cap, sewing bags. It 
was: “Half a dozen are watching Ivry Manor 
House !” 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 207 


I think Sir George realised when I did that it was 
a searching party for him; he had been leaning 
against the door, listening. Suddenly he bolted for 
the keg where he had left his mackintosh, and picked 
it up. But The Unknown was before him. He 
quickly locked the outer door and stood with his 
back against it. 

‘‘I cannot allow you to go out, sir,” he said very 
politely. “Whether those men are searching for you 
or are hunting for — for some one else, you and I 
have a duty to perform : we must protect this young 
lady. In fact, and however strongly you may feel 
against it, I hope, sir, you will see the wisdom of 
shielding all the women concerned from publicity. 
And in this case it is not chivalry; it is self-protec- 
tion.” Sir George wavered. “You can see what the 
papers will make of it, sir. That the plot has failed 
would not check the general excitement; the situa- 
tion is ludicrous instead of serious. That is the dif- 
ference.” 

Sir George sat down heavily and groaned. Per- 
haps I imagined it, but he looked older, leaner, paler 
than he had done earlier in the evening. 

“I have this plan to offer,” pursued The Un- 
known. “We will get the machine from Bagsby in 
an hour'' — he consulted a handsome watch ; I won- 
dered whose it had been — “and I will take you wher- 
ever you wish; to Gresham Place, or, if you will feel 


AFFINITIES 


208 

safer back in town, to the express for London. You 
can get it at East Newbury. If — if the young lady 
wishes, we will drop her at Ivry on the way.” 

Sir George considered and decided to go back to 
town. He would not feel safe, after this, in the 
country, and he could wire ahead and be met by — 
I think he said he intended to call out the reserves. 
I may be wrong about this, but he gave me the im- 
pression that he would never walk out again without 
a detachment of the Royal Guard. 

And so we settled down again to wait for Bagsby 
— that is, we settled down apparently; actually, I 
was busy devising a method to get rid of our high- 
wayman and to secure my necklace again. For any 
one could tell that he only meant to get Daphne’s 
m.otor to escape in and that he would probably dump 
Sir Greorge and me in a ditch, or cut our throats, or 
sandbag us, and make his escape with everything 
valuable on us, including my slipper buckles which 
were platinum and had my monogram on in dia- 
monds. 

If I could only have warned Sir George! But 
there The Unknown sat between us, with his eyes 
on both of us at once (if this is possible in anything 
but a fish), asking me how I liked England and 
what I thought of wealthy American girls marrying 
impoverished foreigners ; and did I know that in the 
Canadian Northwest Mounted Police the word 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 209 


‘"home” was practically taboo ! And I said I abomi- 
nated England and that I couldn’t understand any 
kind of an American girl marrying any Englishman^ 
and where was Canada^ He gave up at that and, 
producing a gold cigarette-case with somebody’s ini* 
tials on it, smoked moodily for some time. 

Then I had my second inspiration of the evening. 
I began to get hungry, and by stages I grew weak, 
dizzy and, finally, almost fainting. Sir George was 
very mildly interested, but The Unknown was flat- 
teringly so. However, when I said faintly that I 
had had no dinner, and that I was sure I should 
swoon if I did not have the hamper brought from 
the Hall at once, he cooled somewhat. 

“You would better try to stick it out,” he urged.. 
“You haven’t had any dinner: I haven’t had food 
for — well, for some time. There’s a tap in the back 
room: let me bring you a drink of water. You have 
no idea, until you have to, how long you can go on 
water.” 

“I am not a boat,” I said scornfully. And after 
a time, when he proved shockingly distrustful of me 
and most unchivalrous, he agreed grudgingly to try 
to steal the hamper from the house. 

“But remember,” he said, turning up his coat col- 
lar, “if anything goes wrong you will have the whole- 
shooting-match down on us here.” (Item: was he. 


AFFINITIES 


210 

American, after all*? An Englishman would have 
said “the whole bally crowd.’’) 

I think he wanted to say something to me before 
he left, but having gained my point I turned my 
back on him. He went, finally, but he stood for a 
moment on the lodge porch, looking back at me. I 
pretended not to know it. 

When I heard him splashing up the drive I turned 
on Sir George like a hurricane. It took him some 
time to understand; I had to go over the part about 
the pearls several times, and when he finally made 
out that they were very valuable he still could not 
understand how I came to throw them at the other 
man. Then I told him about the theft of the pic- 
ture, and that we had the thief in our grasp if we 
could get him. Sir George’s face was very queer. 
When he got it all finally, however, he wakened up 
at once He asked me what the collar was worth, 
and said young English girls did not wear such costly 
jewels, but that he would see that they were recov- 
ered. And the plan was simple enough. The great- 
est things in life are simple. I said to him that I 
could easily see how he became Premier. 

The shutters of the inner room were bolted on the 
outside. We would coax our gentleman in there 
and lock the door. He would be there, as I said 
with enthusiasm to Sir George, like a ripe apple on 
a tree, ready for picking at any time. 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 211 

It worked to a charm, although the result was not 
what we had expected. Very far from it, indeed. 
The Unknown, which is shorter than saying “The 
Man in Tweeds’’ or “The Sociable Highwayman,” 
came back in about half an hour, with his cap miss- 
ing and mud up to his knees. 

“Jove,” he said, shaking himself, “this is Para- 
dise compared to that up there. The lower floor is 
a wreck: two of them are asleep, three of them are 
standing on chairs and talking at once, and a tall, 
fair woman in green satin is having ladylike hys- 
terics by herself in a comer.” 

“The tall, fair woman in green,” I said coldly, 
“is Mrs. Harcourt-Standish. It is strange you did 
not know her.” 

He whistled and then looked at me with one of 
his slow, boyish smiles. 

“Well, as to that,” he observed, opening the ham- 
per, “I — you see, I never saw her in hysterics. It’s 
supposed to make a great difference.” 

“We need a box from the other room,” I said, in- 
wardly trembling. “We have used one for fire- 
wood.” We had, purposely, and it threatened to fire 
the chimney. I don’t mind saying that I had a hor- 
rid guilty feeling when I said it, like Delilah cutting 
Samson’s hair, or the place where Blanche Bates took 
the card out of her stocking in The Girl of the 
Golden West. The Unknown glanced at the box 


AFFINITIES 


212 

on the hearth, at the Prime Minister, who was getting 
out the salad, and at me, feeling as I have just said. 
Then he turned on his heel, whistling softly, and 
went into the inner room. 

Sir George dropped the salad on the instant, with 
a crash, and had the door slammed and locked im- 
mediately. His sandy moustache stood out quite 
straight, and he looked very military (or is it mili- 
tant*?). There was silence from the inner room, and 
then my gentleman found the door and rattled the 
crazy latch. 

“The lock has sprung in some way,*’ he said po- 
litely from the other side. “I will have to trouble 
you to open it.*’ 

The band around my throat began to loosen, and, 
anyhow, if he had been little and ugly I would not 
have cared. Why should I condone a crime because 
Nature had given him a handsome body to hold an 
ignoble spirit? I went over to the door and called 
through it triumphantly: 

“We are not going to unlock the door, and when 
Bagsby comes we are going to send for the police.” 

(That was the Premier’s plan. He would waylay 
Bagsby at the point of his revolver — Sir George’s — 
and make him take him to the nearest constable. 
Then Sir George would get a conveyance and make 
his escape after sending me on to Ivry. I would 
not stay in the lodge alone with a desperate criminal. 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 213 

and I did not wish to face Daphne and the rest in 
their present condition.) 

I was not hungry, after all. Everything I ate 
stuck somewhere in my throat and brought tears to 
my eyes, and Sir George was not hungry, either. He 
kept walking around the room and eying the door, 
and once he got out his revolver and put it on the 
box. Finally, he went to the doorway. 

‘‘If you will pass this young woman’s jewelry 
out under the door,” he said, “we will see that you 
are not molested by the police.” 

“On our honour !” I called eagerly. For, after all, 
he had been gentle with me when he thought I was 
stealing the forks. (Although, after all, why should 
he not have been? They were not his.) 

“Fll see you in perdition first!” came the sulky 
answer. I hoped it was meant for Sir George. And 
after that there was nothing to do but wait for 
Bagsby. 

VI 

We did not talk. Sir George watched the door 
to the inner room and sneezed frequently. Part 
of the time he examined his revolver, which he 
put on the keg in front of him. He was very clumsy 
with it; I suppose a Prime Minister has an armour- 
bearer usually, or something of that sort. Once we 
heard an automobile far off, and Sir George ran out 


214 


AFFINITIES 


to the gates and closed them. But the machine went 
past, and from the voices it seemed to be filled with 
men. I saw it again later. 

While Sir George was outside in the rain I emptied 
his revolver. It i^ one thing to have a man arrested 
for stealing one’s jewels, and quite a different one 
to murder him in cold blood. I had the cartridges in 
my hand when Sir George opened the door, and in 
my excitement I threw them into the fire. From 
that moment until we left I stood behind one of the 
packing-cases and waited for the hearth to open fire 
on us. But for some reason the cartridges did not 
explode. Perhaps they fell too far back in the 
chimney. 

(1. E. This would make a good plot for a detec- 
tive story. Some time I shall try it. Writing is much 
easier than I had thought it would be, especially 
conversation. The villain could put a row of shells 
on a fire-log, pointing toward the hero’s easy-chair. 
The hero comes home and lights the fire, and then 
the heroine, whom the villain loves, comes on some 
agonised errand to the hero’s room at night, sits in 
his chair and is murdered. Of course, the hero is 
suspected, or perhaps the villain jumps from behind 
a curtain to save the lady, kneels on the hearth-rug 
and gets a broadside that finishes him. You can see 
the possibilities.) 

Sir George was growing distinctly less agreeable. 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 215 

He made another appeal to the prisoner to give up 
the necklace and put it out under the door, but the 
prisoner did not make any reply. 

At three o’clock Bagsby came. We hurried out 
to the little porch and watched him stop the car just 
beside us, with its nose at the gates. As he was 
getting out, muttering, to open them. Sir George 
caught him by the shoulder and held the revolver 
under his nose. 

“Get back into the car,” he commanded, “and 
take this young woman and myself to Newbury. And 
mind you do it. No nonsense. Do you know the 
road*?” 

Bagsby muttered sullenly that he did, and then, 
just when I was safely in the tonneau and had drawn 
a long breath. Sir George stopped with his foot on 
the step and — I think he swore. Then he put the 
revolver in my hand and pointed it at Bagsby’s 
neck. 

“Do you know how to shoot?” he demanded. 

“Ye — yes.” 

“I have forgotten my mackintosh,” he explained 
curtly. “Shoot him if he attempts to start the car.” 
He turned in the doorway to say : “Don’t take your 
finger off the trigger.” I might just as well have 
been pointing the automobile wrench, for there was 
nothing in the revolver. 

Then he went into the cottage, and was gone fully 


AFFINITIES 


216 

a minute. But the strange thing was that as he 
went into the house a lightning flash lit up his fig- 
ure, and he had his mackintosh over his arm ! How- 
ever, he might have meant his goloshes, which is 
English for overshoes and sounds like mackintosh. 
(I know at home I always confuse Wabash and Osh- 
kosh.) While he was in the house the second strange 
thing happened. Bagsby squirmed in his seat in 
front of me and said in a muffled voice: “Be easy 
with that trigger. Miss!’’ 

It was not Bagsby at all ! 7/ was the prisoner we 
had locked in the inner room I 

“Oh !” I said limply, and the revolver slid out of 
my lap. He turned cautiously and bent over the 
back of the driver’s seat. 

“Everything’s all right,” he said quickly. “You 
are perfectly safe; I am going to take you home. 
Unload that revolver, won’t you, before he gets 
back*? Or let me do it.” 

“It is unloaded,” I quavered. “I did it myself. 
But why 

“Sh ! Hold out your hand.” 

I did, slowly, and I felt my necklace drop into it. 
He caught my fingers and held them. 

“Now, will you trust me*?” he whispered. We 
could hear Sir George falling over boxes in the house 
and talking to himself. “I have been fair with you, 
haven’t I*?” 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 217 


“I — yes!” I couldn’t say less, could I, with the 
pearls in my hand^ ‘1 — I suppose I can trust you. 
I only want to go home and have a cup of weak tea 
and go to bed.” 

‘‘Good girl !” he said. “Of course you can trust 
me.” And leaning over, without any warning, he 
kissed my palm, while the necklace slid to the floor 
of the tonneau beside the revolver. It was all most 
amazing. “Not a word to Sir George, please. He 
is upset enough as it is. It is my turn to trust you.” 

“But I don’t understand,” I was beginning, when 
Sir George came to the door of the cottage. At 
that moment one of the cartridges in the fire ex- 
ploded, and without looking back he leaped off the 
porch and into the car. I had only time to pick up 
the revolver and to point its harmless barrel at the 
chauffeur’s back. I have no doubt that to this min- 
ute Sir George thinks that a desperate attempt was 
made that night on his life. For reasons that I am 
coming to, I never explained. I am very vague 
about the next thirty minutes. We passed a man, 
I recall, some distance down the lane, a man who 
turned and yelled at us through the storm, and I 
rather thought that it was Bagsby. I couldn’t be 
quite certain. And after we had gone perhaps a mile 
we met the automobile we had heard earlier coming 
back through the mud. We made a detour which 


218 


AFFINITIES 


almost ditched us, and passed them without slacken- 
ing speed. 

The pace was terrific. Sir George and I rattled 
about in the tonneau, now jammed together at one 
side and now at another. I was much too busy try- 
ing to stay in the car to have time to wonder what 
it all meant. But I found out soon enough. 

The other car had turned and was following us! 
It was coming very fast, too; and they had taken off 
the muffler, which made it even more alarming. 
When Sir George saw that we were being pursued 
he became frantic. After threatening the supposed 
Bagsby he began to offer bribes. For, of course, one 
could understand that the position was an igno- 
minious one for any Prime Minister, and that his 
dignity would be sure to suffer if we were overtaken 
and the story came out. How many times at home 
I have sat in a theatre and seen cinematograph pic- 
tures of people in a motor being followed at top 
speed, with perhaps an angry father shaking his fist 
from the pursuing car. But never had I expected 
to be playing castanets with the Premier of Great 
Britain in the tonneau of a machine driven by a 
highwayman, and flying from unknown pursuers 
who were chasing us for Heaven knows what rea- 
son. Even at the time I remember thinking what 
a cinematograph picture we would make. 

Up to this point the story has been mild enough. 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 219 


Now it becomes tragic. For at the place where the 
car should have kept straight on to go to Newbury 
it turned suddenly, putting me in Sir George’s lap 
for a moment, and jounced along over mud and 
ruts, through a narrow lane. Sir George threw me 
off ungallantly and yelled. Then he leaned over and 
held the revolver against the driver’s neck. 

‘‘What do you mean*?” he almost shrieked. 
“Where are you going, sir*? This is not the road to 
Newbury!” But the car kept on. Sir George was 
frantic. He demanded that the car be stopped, so 
he could get out and hide in the hedge. He snapped 
the trigger, regardless of the fact that had it been 
loaded we would have gone crashing into eternity 
and a tree at forty miles an hour. 

Then he commanded our chauffeur to turn around 
and ram the pursuing car to destruction, although 
he put it differently. And then, finding he made 
no impression on the hooded and goggled figure in 
the driver’s seat, he stood up frantically and poised 
the revolver to brain the man at the wheel. 

He was quite mad. It was not courage on my 
part that made me leap and catch his arm. It was 
sheer self-preservation. The revolver hurtled into 
the road. (I cannot find the dictionary, but I’m 
sure “hurtled” is correct, and certainly it is forceful. 
The revolver hurtled into the road, and Sir George 
collapsed, with me on top of him. Afterwards, of 


AFFINITIES 


220 

course, I had chills, because, being the Prime Minis- 
ter, no doubt he could have me put in the Tower 
or beheaded, or something dreadful. And would it 
be “lese-majeste” to knock over the King's repre- 
sentative? 

By this time we were well up the lane, and the 
other car shot past along the highroad. But our 
pace did not moderate, and after a little the other 
car found its mistake and came back. We could 
hear it a quarter of a mile or so behind us. And at 
that precise instant we began to slow up : the engine 
struggled for a few yards, began to pant, gave two 
or three exhausted gasps, and then turned over on 
its side and died. The next moment we were all 
three in the road and running like mad up a hill. 

If one knows where one is going, and whom one 
is with, and who is behind one shouting ‘‘Stop 
thief!" it is not so bad. But to have a man you 
don’t know take you by the arm and drag you along 
through briers and mud toward Heaven knows 
where, with half a dozen other men just below 
climbing faster than you can run, and it is raining, 
and you haven’t an idea what it is all about — well, 
it is not pleasant. And I had lost a heel off one 
slipper and was three inches shorter on one side than 
on the other. 

Sir George was for refusing the hill and for dodg- 
ing among the trees, but our deliverer (?) held him 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 221 


tight. Once, in a frenzy of alarm, he did break loose, 
but he was promptly captured and brought back, 
with apologies, but firmness. It was easy to see why. 
He would have caught his death of cold if he had 
wandered over those hills all night in the rain, and 
what would have become of England? (I am very 
glad there are no Prime Ministers in America, and 
most of the Presidents that I recall would be as easy 
to run away with as a bull hippopotamus.) 

And then we found ourselves at a side entry of 
what seemed to be a colossal house. The door was 
partly open and a man in livery was asleep on a 
bench just inside the door. 

The hold on my arm was released. The Prime 
Minister, assisted by The Unknown, went up the 
steps and in through the door. 

I struggled up alone, with my lungs suddenly col- 
lapsed and yells from somewhere behind me in the 
darkness. I could hardly lift my feet, and yet I 
knew I must get up the steps and through that open 
door before somebody reached out from the black 
behind me and clutched me. It was a nightmare 
come to life. And then the footman caught my out- 
stretched hand and dragged me in, the door slammed, 
and I sat down very quietly on the hall bench and 
fainted away. 

(One of the people in this story insists that I was 
not left to drag myself up the steps alone, and that 


AFFINITIES 


222 

he took me up and put me on the bench. But he 
was excited, and I should know what really hap- 
pened. He never even glanced at me.) 

VII 

I am sure, gentle reader — you can see what facil- 
ity I am gaining; I would not have dared the 
‘‘gentle reader” in Chapter I — I am sure you will 
think me stupid not to have understood the situation 
by that time. But I did not. When I came to my- 
self the footman was standing by, very stiffly, with 
a glass of wine on a tray, and it was easy to see that 
he knew I had lost my heel and that one of my lace 
sleeves was gone. When I unclenched my hand and 
found the necklace still there, and then dropped it 
on the tray while I drank the wine, his jaw fell. But 
where he had said, “Will you have some wine. 
Miss?” before, now he said, “Shall I call ’Awkins, 
my lady?” 

“Don’t call any one,” I said wearily. “Or — ^I 
wish you would find the — the person who just 
came in with Sir George.” And as he turned to go, 
looking very puzzled, “Where am I?” I asked. 

This really should have been said when I first 
roused. 

“At Wimberley Towers, my lady,” the man an- 
swered, but he looked at me again curiously. 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 223 


There was loud talking going on down the hall, 
and, as I sat, I could make out scraps of it. A man’s 
voice, vaguely familiar, in an even monotone, fol- 
lowed by a shrill, excited one, also masculine. 

‘‘Berthold said there was a woman in the car, and 
that was what threw us off, sir. He’s always seeing 
women.” 

A cold, high English voice came next and then 
another, but without the incisiveness of the earlier 
night — Sir George’s voice, heavy and lifeless, yet 
with an undercurrent of scorn. 

“Surely you do not think that necessary,” he said. 

The door was closed again, but a word reached me 
now and then, occasional raisins in the loaf of my 
darkness. (This is a better metaphor than I ex- 
pected it to be, because I was loafing and the hall 
was dark!) There was talk about Three-Mile 
Lane, and somebody being accosted at a station, and 
a jingle of something that sounded like money, fol- 
lowed by the heavy tramping of men along a distant 
corridor and the closing of a door. Then a machine 
started somewhere outside with half a dozen shot- 
like reports followed by the soft hum of the engine. 
I had a queer feeling of being deserted in a strange 
place, and it came over me suddenly that I had heard 
there was a Lady Lethbridge at Wimberley, only 
they mostly called her Snooksie — English people 
use the queerest diminutives — and what if she came 


AFFINITIES 


224 

and asked me what I was doing and how I got 
there*? Or perhaps Sir George would wire to town 
and bring down a lot of people to take me off to the 
Tower. The more I thought of it, the surer I felt 
that this was what was coming. I hoped they would 
let me change my gown, anyhow — white satin and 
what was left of bits of lace sleeves would look so 
queer being carried off to prison. And to think how 
I had dreamed of that gown, and how, because it 
was my first really dignified evening gown — all the 
rest being tulle and dancing frocks — how I had 
thought I would wear it just once and perhaps meet 
somebody who liked it terribly and me in it. And 
then I would lay it away, and some time later — 
much later — I would bring it out, a little yellow, 
and say, “Do you remember it^” And he would 
say, “Remember it? As long as I live.” And I 
would say, “I thought of having baby’s christening 
cloak made of it on account of the sentiment.” And 
then he would hold out his arms and say, “Please 
don’t!” 

I had not heard any one come along the hall, be- 
cause I was sniffling ; so, when something touched me 
on the shoulder I looked up, and there he was, just 
as I had been — well, there he was. And he sat down 
on the bench beside me, in a puddle, and helped me 
find my handkerchief. 

“I didn’t mean to leave you,” he said gently, “but 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 225 


there was something that had to be attended to and 
couldn’t wait. Can you walk as far as the library? 
There is a fire there and I will get you something 
dry. We can’t go upstairs, because I suppose you 
don’t care to let Blanche in on this?” 

“Blanche?” I said, trying to balance on my one 
heel. 

“My brother’s wife,” he explained. “Luckily, 
she’s a little deaf, and Thad has gone up to see she 
doesn’t snoop. What in the world is the matter? 
Just now you were quite tall and stately, and now 
you are hardly to my shoulder!” 

So I told him about my heel, and he said he liked 
little women, and that no person who was just five 
feet two inches and had really curly hair was ever 
a Militant at heart, and that he had always 
thought young American girls were well heeled. It 
was an astonishing joke for an Englishman, until it 
developed that he had been living in California for 
a dozen years and was only home on a visit. And 
that his name was John, although he ^as mostly 
called Jack. When we were nicely settled by the 
library fire and the man had brought me a cup of tea 
that would have floated an egg, I asked him quite 
casually if there was a Mrs. John. He drew his 
chair up just opposite me and leaned forward with 
his chin in his hands. 

“Not yet,” he said. 


AFFINITIES 


226 

Something made me draw my breath in sharply — 
I think it was his tone — and I quite scalded my 
throat with the tea. The fire w^as very hot, and lit- 
tle clouds of steam began to rise from my white satin. 

‘‘I have spoiled my gown,’’ I said ruefully, “and 
I had such plans for it.” 

“What kind of plans he asked, moving his chair 
forward a little. “Do tell me. I’m always making 
plans myself. And pretty soon, when you are dry 
and the motor is ready, I shall have to take you 
back to Ivry, and when we meet again — if we ever 
do, for Daphne is going to kill me on sight — you will 
be very, very formal and have both your heels.” 

“I hope you will forgive me,” I said stiffly, “for 
calling you a — a thief and locking you up and — 
everything. I don’t understand anything yet; it must 
be because I am so sleepy.” 

“Poor little girl !” he said. “What you have gone 
through ! And as for forgiving you, you saved my 
life tonight. Why, if you thought me a thief, did 
you unload that revolver? If you tell me that I 
will try to clear up the rest of the mysteries.” 

“I was afraid he might become excited and shoot 
you,” I returned simply. And he bent over and took 
my hand. 

“I hoped that was it,” he said, just as simply. He 
did not relinquish my hand. 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 227 


(When I told Daphne the story I merely said of 
this: “I dried myself by the library fire/’) 

But suddenly I saw something that fairly made 
my blood chill in my veins. On the floor, at his 
very feet, the firelight dancing on their polished 
metal, lay a pair of handcuffs. 

“Oh!” I cried and jumped to my feet, pointing. 
“You haven’t been telling me the truth. They have 
given you a few minutes, and then they are coming 
back to take you away. Oh, don’t let them to do 
it. I couldn’t stand it!” 

Yes, that is what I said. It was utterly shameless, 
of course, and no properly-behaved young woman 
would ever have said it. But no properly-behaved 
young woman would have kidnapped a Prime Minis- 
ter, anyhow, and sat in a strange house while her 
hostess was asleep, drinking tea at four o’clock in 
the morning. 

When I stood up he stood up, too, and looked 
down at me. “It is worth while having been a brute 
and a villain,” he said soberly, “to hear that. I am 
not under arrest or going to be. The fact is that 
two entirely different and — if you will forgive me 
— nefarious schemes have been under way at the 
same time, and the lines crossed. You and I got 
tangled in them and nearly submerged. But that 
was not accident; it was destiny.” He took my 
other hand. 


228 


AFFINITIES 


At that absorbing moment the footman announced 
cautiously that the motor was at the door. It was 
horribly disappointing. From destiny to motor 
wraps is such a descent. 

“Do we have to go right away?” I said. 

VIII 

It was just dawn when we started, one of the grey 
dawns that have a suggestion of pink, like a smoke- 
coloured chiffon over a rose foundation. The rain 
was over, and down in the valley below us lay sha- 
dowy white lakes of mist. I threw back my head 
and took a great breath. 

“How beautiful!” I said. And he repeated, 
“Beautiful !” But he looked directly at me. I had 
a queer, thrilly feeling in the back of my neck. 

And then we were flying down the hillside we had 
climbed so painfully the night before, and were 
dipping into the mist pools. Here and there grey 
shadows moved under the trees and resolved them- 
selves first into rocks and then into sheep. (My de- 
scriptions are improving.) And as we went along 
he told me the story. 

It seems he had come back from America for a 
visit, and on the second day of his stay the Wim- 
berley Romney had been stolen by an expert picture 
thief posing as a tourist. He had caught a glimpse 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 229 

of the visitor, so when the Romney was missed he 
started out at once on the search, taking a motor 
cycle. The whole countryside was roused, and three 
detectives came down from London. But he had an 
idea that he would find his man somewhere on the 
moor, and he had lost himself there. After a night 
under a rock he had found a cottage and got his 
bearings. But the rain kept him there. He had 
got as far as Harcourt Hall when another storm 
came up. To his surprise he found the place almost 
in decay, but the house open. He went in, dropped 
asleep in the morning-room on a divan, wakened by 
hearing me pass within a foot of where he lay, and 
followed me. When I threw my necklace at him, 
at first he was puzzled and amused. Later, he kept 
it deliberately. 

The next part of his story he had secured, I think 
he said, by sitting on Bagsby’s chest down the road, 
after he had escaped by means of a broken shutter 
from the rear room where we had locked him. Bags- 
by had had a puncture, and finding he had no time 
to go back to Ivry for Daphne and the rest, he went 
directly to the station. A train had just pulled out, 
and a man in an ulster and travelling-cap was stand- 
ing on the platform. He said, “The car for Gre- 
sham Place, sir’' — which is what he was to say — 
and the gentleman climbed in. But about two miles 
out of town he (the passenger) had discovered he 


230 


AFFINITIES 


had made a mistake, and demanded to be set down. 
But Bagsby had his orders. He carried him to the 
door of the Hall on the third speed, and the rest we 
knew. 

“Then,’’ I cried breathlessly, “Sir George was not 
— Sir George!” 

“Far from it,” he said cheerfully. “Poor old 
chap, what a front he put up! It seems that after 
he got the picture the alarm was raised too soon for 
him. He cut back over the country to make the 
railroad at Hepburn, and was overtaken by a storm. 
He found the Hall, crawled in through a rear win- 
dow, concealed the picture there — it is still rolled 
in that carpet in the room where we hid, and waited 
for the storm to cease. But hunger drove him out. 
The picture off his hands, he made a break for it, 
got to Newbury just in time to miss the train, saw 
the constable and a posse approaching in a machine 
and bristling with guns, and at that minute Bagsby 
said: ‘Gresham Place, sir.’ From that time on he 
was virtually our prisoner, poor chap. He fell in 
with the plot because he didn’t know what else to 
do. But what a shock it must have been when Bags- 
by dumped him back at the Hall, after he had 
walked six miles to get away from it.” 

“But you?” I exclaimed in bewilderment. “If 
you knew all the time ’ 

“I didn’t. I did not recognise him until he took 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 231 


off his mackintosh at the lodge. After that I had 
two problems : to capture him without alarming you, 
and to prevent the old-woman constable of the coun- 
try from discovering us and dragging you and 
Daphne and all the rest into notoriety. Thanks to 
your cooperation it will never be known that a 
Suffragette plot to kidnap the Prime Minister was 
foiled last night.’’ 

“Then — the real Prime Minister” — I could hard- 
ly speak. I was horribly disappointed. I had hitched 
my wagon to a star and it had turned out to be a 
dirt-grubbing little meteorite. 

“His grandcliildren at Gresham Place took mea- 
sles and they telegraphed him not to come.” 

There was silence for a moment. We were both 
thinking. Then : 

“I am sure you managed it all very nicely,” I 
conceded, “and I am very grateful now that you 
saved my necklace and — and all that. But if you 
think you captured him without alarming me you 
are mistaken. I shall never, never be the same per- 
son again. And as for the reward, I don’t want it. 
I shall give it to Daphne for The Cause.” 

He looked around at me quickly. “To take my 
place,” I amended. “I don’t really care anything 
about voting, and, anyhow, I should never do it 
properly. They will welcome the money in my 
place, although doesn’t it really belong to you?” 


AFFINITIES 


232 


“I have already three rewards/’ he said, looking 
straight ahead. “The revolver which you emptied 
for fear our friend might shoot me, the limp little 
ball that is your handkerchief in my breast pocket, 
and this hour that belongs to me — the dawn, the 
empty world, and you sharing it all with me. Do 
you know,” he went on, “that Daphne has seventeen 
pictures of you, and that I used to say I was going 
to marry you^? There was one in very short skirts 
and long, white ” 

“Mercy!” I broke in. “What is that over there*?” 

The mist had parted like a curtain, and on a 
lower road we saw, moving slowly, a strange proces- 
sion. We stopped the machine and watched. Daphne 
was leading. She had the tail of her pink velvet 
gown thrown up over her shoulders and she was in 
her stocking feet. She carried her slippers dejectedly 
in her hand and she was ploughing along without 
ever troubling to seek a path. Behind her trailed the 
others. Most of them limped : all were mud-stained 
and dishevelled. An early sun-ray touched Violet 
and showed her wrapped, toga-fashion, in the hall 
banner. The red letters of “Votes for Women” ran 
around her diagonally like the stripes of a bafber- 
pole. Poppy was trailing listlessly at the end of the 
procession, her gown abandoned to its fate and 
sweeping two yards behind her ; a ribbon fillet with 
a blue satin rose that had nestled above her ear had 


THE BORROWED HOUSE 233 


become dislodged and the rose now hung dispiritedly 
at the back of her neck. Her short hair was all out 
of curl and lay matted in very straight little strands 
over her head. 

And bringing up the tail of the procession — kick- 
ing viciously at Poppy’s blue satin train in front of 
him — came Bagsby, a sheepish Bagsby loaded down 
with the hamper, a pail, a broom and a double- 
burner lamp with green shades. Even as he watched 
he took a hasty look ahead at the plodding back of 
his mistress, raised the lamp aloft and flung it 
against a stone. The crash was colossal, but not one 
head was turned to see the cause. They struggled 
along, sunk in deep bitterness and gloom. 

And so they passed across our perspective, unsee- 
ing, unheeding, and the mists of the valley claimed 
them again. 

The man beside me turned to me, his hands on 
the wheel. ‘‘Are you sorry ^ou are not with them*?” 
he asked gently. But I cowered back in my wraps 
and shook my head. “Take me home,” I implored, 
“and please don’t look at me again. If they all 
look like that I must be unspeakable !” 

“We will get there ahead and wait for them to- 
gether,” he said. “And tonight I shall bring Thad 
and Blanche over to meet you. You — you won’t 
mind seeing me again so soon*?’' 


AFFINITIES 


234 


‘‘Oh, no,” I said hastily. “It — it is hours until 
evening.” 

“It will seem like eternities,” he reflected. 

“Yes, it will,” I said. 

(For it would to me, and if a man likes you and 
you like him, why not let him know it*? And if he 
liked me the way I looked then, what would he 
think when he saw me clothed properly and in my 
right mind*?) 

He leaned over and kissed my hands as they lay 
in my lap. “Bless you!” he said. “I suppose you 
couldn’t possibly wear that gown*? Will you have 
to throw it away?” 

“No,” I announced, “I am going to lay it away. 
I — I may use it some time.” 

“How?” He was as curious as a child. “Are 
you going to make a banner of it, with gold fringe 
all round and ‘Votes for Women’ embroidered on 
it?” 

''No!” I said decisively. 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 


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SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 


I T was on a Thursday evening that Basil Ward 
came to Poppy’s house at Lancaster Gate. We 
had been very glum at dinner, with Poppy staring 
through me with her fork half raised, and dabs of 
powder around her eyes so I wouldn’t know she had 
been crying. Vivian’s place was laid, but of course 
he was not there. And after dinner we went up to 
the drawing room, and Poppy worked at the kitchen 
clock. 

We heard Basil coming up the stairs, and Poppy 
went quite pale. The alarm on the clock went off 
I just then, too, and for a minute we both thought 
• vre’d been blown up. 

Basil stood in the doorway — ^he’s very good-look- 
[' ing, Basil, especially when he is excited. And he 
was excited now. Poppy rose and stared at him. It 
[ was very dramatic. 

I “Well?” she said. 

“Fm deucedly sorry. Poppy,” said Basil. “He 
\ absolutely refuses. He says he’ll stay. Says he 
likes it. It’s extremely quiet. He wants his pens 
j and some paper sent over — has an idea for the new 
I book.” 


237 


AFFINITIES 


238 

Poppy’s color came back in two spots in her cheeks, 

“So he likes it !” she observed. “Very well. Then 
that’s settled.” She turned to me. “You’ve heard 
Basil, Madge, and you’ve heard me. That’s all there 
is to it.” 

Poppy is very excitable, and as long as she had 
the clock in her hand Basil stayed near the door. 
Now, however, she put it down, and Basil came in. 

“You and Vivian are a pair of young geese,” he 
said to Poppy. “It’s a horrible place.” 

“Vivian likes it.” 

“You are going to let him stay‘?” 

“I didn’t make the law. You men make these 
laws. Now try living up to them. When women 
have the vote ” 

But Basil headed her off. He dropped his voice. 

“That isn’t the worst, Mrs. Viv,” he said slowly. 
“He’s — gone on a hunger strike !” 


I’d been in England for six months visiting 
Daphne Delaney, who is my cousin. But visiting 
Daphne had been hard work. She is so earnest. 
One started out to go shopping with her, and ended 
up on a counter in Harrod’s demanding of a mob of 
women hunting bargains in one-and-six kids (gloves) 
why they were sheep. 

“Sheep !” she would say, eyeing them scornfully. 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 239 


‘‘Silly sheep who do nothing but bleat — with but one 
occupation, or reason for living, to cover your backs 

Then two or three stately gentlemen in frock-coats 
would pull her down, and I would try to pretend I 
was not with her. 

Now I believe in Suffrage. I own a house back 
home in America. Father gave it to me so I could 
dress myself out of the rent. (But between plumbers 
and taxes and a baby with a hammer, which ruined 
the paint, I never get much. Motb'^r has to help.) 
The first thing I knew, the men voted to pave the 
street in front of the old thing, and I had to give up 
a rose-coloured charmeuse and pass over a check. 
But that isn’t all. The minute the street was paved, 
some more men came along and raised my taxes be- 
cause the street was improved ! So I paid two hun- 
dred dollars to have my taxes raised ! Just wait ! 

That made me strong for Suffrage. And of course 
there are a lot of other things. But Fm not militant. 
You know as well as I do that it’s coming. The 
American men are just doing what father does at 
Christmas time. For about a month beforehand he 
talks about hard times, and not seeing his way clear 
and all that. And on Christmas morning he comes 
down stairs awfully glum, with one hand behind him. 
He looks perfectly miserable, but he’s really having 
the time of his life. We always play up. We kiss 
him and tell him never to mind ; maybe he can do it 


AFFINITIES 


240 

next year. And we’re always awfully surprised when 
he brings his hand around with checks for every- 
body, bigger than they’d expected. 

(That’s the way with Suffrage in America. The 
men are holding off, and having a good time doing 
it. But they’ll hand it over pretty soon, with 
bells on. The American man always gives his 
womenkind what they want, if they want it hard 
enough. Only he’s holding off a little, so they’ll ap- 
preciate it when they get it.) 

It was after the affair of the Prime Minister that 
I left Daphne. We kidnapped him, you remember, 
only it turned out to be someone else, and Violet 
Harcourt-Standish got in awfully wrong and had to 
go to the Riviera. I really did not wish to kidnap 
him, but the thing came up at tea at Daphne’s one 
day, and one hates to stay out of things. 

Poppy was going on a motor trip just then, and 
when she asked me to go along, I agreed. I was 
spending a Sunday with her. 

‘‘I’m not running away, Madge,” she explained. 
“But I’m stony broke, and that’s the truth. I’ll have 
to get back to work.” 

“You can’t work in the motor.” 

Poppy paints, and makes a lot of money — mural 
decorations, you know, panels for public buildings, 
and all that sort of thing. 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 241 


“I want sea, sea with mist over it, and rocks. 
And a cave ” 

“Caves are damp. There are plenty of hotels.” 

“A cave,” she said, examining her cigarette dream- 
ily, “with the sea coming in against a setting sun, 
and the spray every color in the world. I think it’s 
Tintagel, Madge.” 

Poppy is terribly pretty, and this is her story, not 
mine. 

“That’s a sweet frock,” I said. “Did you hear 
that man to-day, when you were speaking at the 
Monument? He said, ‘Bless its pretty ’eart ’ ” 

Poppy’s hair is the softest, straightest hair you 
ever saw, and her nose is short and childish. Her 
eyes are soft, too, and her profile is so helpless that 
the bobbies help her across the streets. But her full 
face is full of character. 

“Was he in front of me?” she demanded. 

“At the side.” 

We both understood. It was her profile again. 
She fell back in her chair and sighed. 

“If you could address the House of Lords in 
profile,” I said, “you’d get the vote.” 

“That’s rot, you know,” she retorted. But she 
coloured. She knew and she knew I knew that her 
new photographs were profile ones. And we both 
knew, too, that they were taken because Vivian Har- 
court had demanded a picture. 


242 


affinities 


“You’re not doing the right thing, Poppy,” I ac- 
cused her. “For one day in the week that Viv sees 
you, there are six days for him to look at that pic- 
ture.” 

“He isn’t obliged to look at it at all.” 

“So long as women beg the question like that,” I 
said severely, “just so long do they postpone serious 
consideration for the Cause.” 

She leaned back and laughed — rather rudely. The 
English can be very rude sometimes. They call it 
frankness. 

“The ridiculous thing about you is that you don’t 
know anything about the Cause,” she said. “With 
you, it’s a fad. It’s the only thing you can’t have. 
So you want it, little Madge. With some of us it’s 
- — well, I can’t talk about it.” 

It made me furious. The idea of dedicating your 
life to a thing, and then being accused 

“I think enough of the Cause to stand out all day 
in a broiling sun,” I snapped, “and be burnt to a 
cinder. Didn’t I pass out your wretched literature 
for hours and make six shillings*?” 

“Don’t call it wretched literature,” she said gently. 
“But — now think a minute. If it came to a show- 
down — your own expression, isn’t it- — a question be- 
tween one of these men who are so mad about you, 
Basil or any of the others — and the Cause, which 
would it be?” 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 243 


“Both,” I replied promptly. 

She laughed again. 

“You delightful little hypocrite!” she cried. “A 
Compromise, then! Not victory, but a truce! Oh, 
martyr to the Cause !” 

“And you?” 

“The Cause,” she said, and turned, fullface to me. 

Well, of course that was Poppy’s affair. I be- 
lieve in living up to one’s conviction, and all that. 
But when you think of the lengths to which she car- 
ried her conviction, and the horrible situation that 
developed, it seems an exceedingly selfish theory of 
life. I believe in diplomatic compromise. 

(I wrote the whole conversation that night to 
father, and he cabled a reply. He generally cables, 
being very busy. He said, “Life is a series of com- 
promises. Who is Basil ?” ) 

Well, we got started at last. Poppy left in a 
raging temper over something or other — a bill be- 
fore the house, I think. I was so busy getting packed 
that I forgot what it was, if I ever knew — and hardly 
spoke for twenty miles. But at Guildford she re- 
covered her temper. It was the time of the Assizes, 
and the Sheriff was lunching at our hotel. His gilt 
coach was at the door, with a footman in wig and 
plush, white stockings and buckles, and a most mag- 
nificent coachman. Poppy’s eyes narrowed. She 
pointed to the footman’s ornamented legs. 


244 


AFFINITIES 


“The great babies she said. “How a man loves 
to dress! Government, is it? Eighteenth century 
costumes and mediaeval laws ! Government — in gold 
lace and a cocked hat! Law in its majesty, Madge, 
with common sense and common justice in rags. 

That can vote, while you and I ” she stopped 

for breath. 

The footman's calves twitched, but he looked 
straight ahead. 

I got her into the building somehow or other. She 
looked quite calm, except that she was breathing 
hard. I confess that I thought she was ashamed of 
herself; I reminded her that she had promised to be 
quiet on this trip, and I told her, as firmly as I could, 
that it wasn't proper to make fun of a man's legs. 

She powdered her nose and looked penitent and 
distractingly pretty. 

“I'm sorry," she said. “It's this parade of au- 
thority that gets on my nerves, and this glittering 
show of half the people ruling all the people." 

When she came back from ordering the luncheon 
she was smiling. I thought it was all over. (I am 
telling this incident, not because it belongs to the 
story, but because it sheds a light on Poppy's char- 
acter, and perhaps explains what came later.) 

“Luncheon!" she said, cheerfully, “with straw- 
berries as big as a teacup, and clotted cream." 

I think my mind was on the clotted cream, for 1 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 245 


followed her past one dining-room to a second, a 
long, low room, full of men. She pushed me in 
ahead. 

“I — I think it’s the wrong room, Poppy,” I said. 
“There’s the 

It was the wrong room, and she knew it. The 
Sheriff was at the centre table and near him was a 
great serving stand, with hot and cold roasts and 
joints. 

I tried to back out, but at that moment Poppy 
slammed the door and locked it. 

“Don’t yell !” she said to me under her breath, and 
dropped something ice-cold down my hack. The 
key! 

About half the men started to their feet. Poppy 
raised a hand. 

“Gentlemen,” she said, “you need not rise! I 
have a few things I would like to say while you finish 
luncheon. I shall be entirely orderly. The question 
of the Suffrage ” 

They dodged as if she had been loaded with 
shrapnel instead of a speech. They shouted and 
clamored. They ordered us out. And all the time 
the door was locked and the key was down my back. 

“Poppy !” I said, clutching her arm. “Poppy, for 
the love of heaven ” 

She had forgotten me absolutely. When she 
finally turned her eyes on me, she never even saw me. 


246 AFFINITIES 

“The door is locked, gentlemen,” she said. “Locked 
and the key hidden. If you will give me five 
minutes ” 

But they would not listen. The Sheriff sat still 
and ate his luncheon. Time might come and time 
might go, tides flow and ebb, old eras give way to 
new — but the British lion must be fed. But once I 
caught his eye, and I almost thought it twinkled. 
Perish the thought ! The old order wink at the new ! 

They demanded the key. The lunch hour was 
over. The Assizes waited. In vain Poppy plead 
for five minutes to talk. 

“After that. I’ll turn over the key,” she promised. 

The only way she could have turned over the key 
was, of course, to take me into a corner, stand me 
on my head and jounce it out ! I was very nervous, 
Idl confess. No one had laid a hand on ^ oppy p 
yet. She was so young and good looking, and the 
minute anybody loomed very close, she turned her 
baby profile to him and he looked as if he’d been 
caught gunning for butterflies. / 

Finally, however, the noise becoming a tumult, 
and Poppy and I forced back against the door, the 
Lord High Sheriff — which sounds like Gilbert & 
Sullivan — approached. The crowd made respectful 
way for him. 

“Now, young ladies,” he said, “this has been an 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 247 


agreeable break in our long day. But — all pleasant 
things must end. Open the door, please.’’ 

“Will you give me five minutes*?” Poppy de- 
manded. “I’m a tax-payer. I help to pay the people 
in this room. I have a right to be heard.” 

“Open the door,” said the Sheriff. 

“No.” 

“Then give up the key, and one of my men ” 

I caught his arm. I couldn’t stand it another 
minute. It is all well enough for Poppy to say it 
was cowardly, and that the situation was ours until 
I gave it away. The key was not down her back. 

“Break the lock,” I said frantically. “The — the 
key is where I can’t get it.” 

He was really twinkling now, but the crowd 
around was outraged for him and his dignity. 

“You didn’t swallow it, did you*?” he asked in 
an undertone. 

“It’s down the back of my frock,” I replied. 

Poppy said afterwards that I cried and made a 
scene and disgraced her generally. It is not true. If 
tears came, they were tears of rage. It is not true 
that I cried on the Sheriff’s breast. I only leaned my 
head against his arm for a minute, and he was not 
angry, for he patted my shoulder. I am terribly 
fond of Poppy, but she is not always reasonable, as 
you will see. 

There had been a great deal of noise. I remember 


AFFINITIES 


248 

hearing echoes of the dining-room excitement from 
the hallway beyond the door, and some one pound- 
ing. They were breaking the lock from the outside. 
All the time Poppy was talking in her lovely soft 
voice. She said: 

“Since woman is called on to obey the laws, she 
ought to have a voice in making them ” 

“Hear, hear!” cried somebody. 

“Since she doesn’t make them, why should she 
obey them?” demanded Poppy, lifting violet eyes to 
the crowd. 

“I didn’t make the Ten Commandments,” said a 
voice from the rear of the room, “but I’ll get hell just 
the same if I break them. What have you got to say 
about; that?” 

Poppy was stumped for once. I believe it was the 
most humiliating moment of her public life. 

Luckily the lock broke just then, and we were 
hustled out of the room. There was a crowd in the 
hall, and it was most disagreeable. I expected to be 
arrested, of course — although I’d been arrested be- 
fore, and if one is sensible and eats, it is not so bad 
— but the crowd, feeling it had the best of things 
with the Ten Commandments, was in high good 
humor. They let us by without a word and the 
Sheriff himself stood on the steps while we got into 
our car. 

Just as Poppy’s chauffeur got the engine started. 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 249 


the landlord ran out and demanded the key. Poppy 
told the chauffeur to go on, in a frantic voice, but he 
hesitated. All the majesty of British law was there 
on the steps, and the gold coach was waiting. Of 
course, to be arrested for disturbing the peace with a 
suffrage speech is one thing, but theft is another. I 
threw a pleading glance at the Sheriff, and he came 
slowly down the steps. Men with wands kept the 
crowd back. The fat coachman with the wig did 
not turn his head, but the footman at the coach door 
leered and avenged his calves. Even Poppy went a 
little pale. 

“Quick,’’ said the Sheriff, ferociously, in a low 
tone, “give me something that looks like a key, and 
then get away as quickly as you can.” 

I opened my pocketbook. The only thing that 
was even the size of a key was my smelling salts 
bottle. So I gave him that, and he covered it with 
his big hand. Then, still frowning savagely, he 
made us a lordly gesture to move on. 

(Have you ever been in the Forum Club building 
that Poppy decorated? The staircase walls are won- 
derful — crowds of women, poor and old, young and 
rich with clouds around them and so on, all ascend- 
ing toward a saintly person with a key — Saint Peter, 
or somebody. Well, the saint is the Sheriff at Guild- 
ford, and the key is a salts bottle, if you look 
closely.) 


AFFINITIES 


250 

We slept at Bournemouth that night. Or rather, 
we didn’t sleep. Poppy sat up half the night trying 
to think of an answer to the ten commandment thing. 
She said she’d get that again — she felt it — and what 
was she to say‘? I had recovered the key and my 
good humor by that time, but I could not help 
much. Seeing her so disturbed, I had not the heart 
to tell her what I suspected. But I was sure that 
I had seen Vivian Harcourt on the edge of the crowd 
at Guildford. It would have made her furious to 
think that she was under any sort of espionage. But 
Vivian was following us, I felt confident, with 
enough money to bail us out if she did anything reck- 
less. He knew her, you see. 

That is why all the rest of it seems so silly. 
Vivian knew Poppy; he knew her convictions, and 
her courage. For him to do the baby thing later 
was stupid. And anyhow, if it was hard on him, 
what was it for me^ 

Poppy slept late in the morning, and I got up and 
went down to the pier, a melancholy place, wet with 
morning mist and almost deserted. There were rows 
of beach chairs, and bathing machines and over- 
turned boats littering the beach, and not a soul in 
sight but a few fishermen. I sat there and thought 
of Newport on a bright July morning, with chil- 
dren and nurses on the sand, and throngs of people, 
and white sailboats and nice young men in flannels 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 251 


I was awfully homesick for a minute. And it 

came over me, too, that I had no particular business 
helping the Cause in England, and having keys put 
down my back, and giving up my gold-topped salts 
bottle, which was a present from Basil Ward, when 
all the time the Cause at home was fighting just as 
grimly and much more politely. 

Vivian was on the pier, at the very end. He was 
sitting looking out, with his finger hooked around 
his cigarette (which is Cambridge fashion, I believe, 
or may be the King does it) and looking very glum. 

“Where is she^? In jail?' he demanded. 

“She’s asleep, poor thing,” I said. 

He snorted. 

“Lots of sleep I’ve had,” he said. “Look here, 
Madge, is she going to take her vacation by locking 
up Sheriffs all along the route Because if she is, 
I’m going back to London.” 

“I think it very likely,” I replied, coldly. “You’d 
better go back anyhow; she’ll be murderous if she 
knows she’s followed.” 

He groaned. 

“I can’t leave her alone, can I?’ 

“I’m along.” 

He laughed. It was rude of him. 

“You!” he said. “Madge, tell me honestly — ■ 
where was the key*?” 


252 


AFFINITIES 


“She put it down my back.’’ 

He fairly howled with joy. I hated him. But 
he calmed before long, and offered me a cigarette as 
a peace offering. I declined. 

“You’d better go along,” he said. “She may need 
the — back again. Madge, is there any chance for ; 
me with her*?” I 

“Well, she likes you, when you are not in the j 
way.” i 

“Pd be in the way now, I suppose, if I turned up | 
to-night at — where do you stop‘?” j 

“At Torquay, Look here, Vivian, Pve just 
thought of something. She’s put out about a thing 
a man said yesterday. She wants an answer. She’s 
got arguments, but what she wants is a retort — 
about six words and smart. If you could give her 
one, she’d probably forgive you hanging around, and i 

all that.” 

So I told him about the ten commandments and 
Poppy knowing she’d get it again and sitting up to 
worry it out. He said it was easy. He’d have 
something to break his appearance at Torquay. But 
it wasn’t as easy as it seemed at first. I left him sit- 
ting there, looking out to sea, with a notebook on ■ 
his knee. He called after me that he’d follow us, a 
few miles behind, but he wouldn’t turn up until he 
had thought of something worth while. 

According to Basil, it was he who finally thought 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 253 


of something. It seems that Vivian wrote out pages 
of a reply, saying that if the questioner compared 
man-made law with the ten commandments, then he 
made Parliament and the House of Lords divine, 
and that this was a reductio ad ahsurdum^ which is 
Greek or something for ridiculous. But he almost 
went mad trying to make it short, and it wasn’t 
funny at all. Whereas, as he knew very well, the 
only chance the speaker had, in such a case, was to 
get a laugh. What he really needed was a retort, 
not a reply. 

We made rather slow progress. In the first place. 
Poppy learned that the chauffeur^ who was a new 
one and quite intelligent, was not in favour of suf- 
frage, and for hours we crawled along, while she ar- 
gued with him. And in the second place, we stopped 
frequently to nail up posters along the roadside. 
Vivian said later that he trailed us quite easily, and 
that there were times when he was only one curve 
in the road behind. He used to get out and putter 
over the engine to pass the time and let us get ahead. 
He did not appear at Torquay, so I knew he wasn’t 
getting along well with the ten commandments. 

But except being put out of a hotel at Exeter for 
discovering a member of Parliament there, in bed 
with the gout, and flinging some handbills in through 
the transom, the rest of the trip was very peace- 
ful. Dartmoor put Poppy into a trance ; the heather 


AFFINITIES 


254 

was in bloom, and she made sketches and colour 
bits, and lay back in the car in a sort of dream, plan- 
ning the next winter’s work. 

She was irritable when she was disturbed, too. 
The creative instinct is a queer thing. Once Booties, 
the chauffeur, asked her a question when she was 
trying to catch some combination or other, and she 
answered him sharply. 

“When the women go to vote. Miss,” he said, 
turning around and touching his cap, “who is going 
to mind the children?” 

“We intend to establish a messenger service,” said 
Poppy, with a crayon in her mouth. 

“A messenger service?” Booties’ eyes stuck out. 

“Yes. To summon the fathers home from the 
pubs to hold the babies.” 

(A “pub” of course is an English saloon.) 

The T. C. matter was still bothering Poppy at 
intervals. She knew as well as anyone that she 
needed a laugh in her retort, and as you have seen, 
Poppy is too earnest to be funny. I said this to 
Basil Ward the night we got to Tintagel 

Poppy was tired, and went to bed early. I walked 
out on the terrace, and Basil was there. He said 
Viv had sent for him on the T. C. matter, and he 
had something in view. 

“He gave it up, poor chap,” he said. “He isn’t 
humorous, you know. As a matter of fact, he and 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 255 


Poppy are both so bally serious that it makes me 
wonder how they’ll hit it off.” 

“If she’s as earnest about matrimony as she is 
about Suffrage,” I said, “she’ll be a sincere wife.” 

Basil said nothing. We had walked out to the 
edge of the cliff, and were leaning against the rough 
stone parapet. 

“It’s rather nice, isn’t it,” he said suddenly. “Here 
we are, almost at Land’s End, and the old Atlantic 
— Madge, will you give me a perfectly honest an- 
swer to a question?” 

I braced myself. 

“Yes.” 

“Did you stay over here in England because your 
whole heart is in the Cause?” 

“Ye— es.” 

“Your whole heart?” 

“Our motives are always mixed, Basil,” I said 
kindly. “It would have been awfully silly to have 
endured that miserable spring and not have stayed 
^for June and July.” 

t “You get a great many cablegrams from America.”’ 

“That,” I said, with dignity, “is of course my owp 
affair.” 

“About the Cause?” 

; “Not — always.” 

! “From a man, of course.” 

! “Yes,” I said sweetly, and went back to the hotel. 


256 


AFFINITIES 


I broke the news to Poppy about Vivian and she 
stormed. But suddenly she stopped, with a calculat- 
ing gleam in her eye. 

“He’s a fool to follow me,” she said, “but he has 
gleams of intelligence, Madge. I shall put the T. C. 
matter up to him !” 

So I sent Viv a note that night. You see one must 
manage Poppy 

“Dear Viv: She knows and the worst is over. 
Breakfast early and keep out of the way until noon. 
She is going to work, and anyhow, it will make her 
curious. If you have a good retort to the T. C. 
business, don’t give it at once. It would humiliate 
her. Then, when you’ve given it to her, if she’s 
pleased, you can ask her the other. She’s silly about i 
you, Viv, but she won’t acknowledge it to herself. 

Madge. 

P. S. Don’t make any stipulation about Suffrage, 
but make her promise to let you do and think as you 
like. Be sure. Get her to write it, if you can. I 
happen to know that if she marries you, she hopes 
you’ll take alternate Sundays with her at the Monu- 
ment, so she can speak at Camberwell. 

M.” 

Poppy came down to breakfast in her best morn- 
ing frock, looking lovely, and sat with her profile 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 257 


to the room. I thought she watched the door, too, 
and she took only an egg, although she usually has 
a kipper also. 

But neither of the men showed up. She loitered 
over the Times, but at last she got her sketching 
things, and we went out to the cliff head, where 
there’s a bench. It is a long tongue of rock, about 
twenty feet wide or so, and far below, on each side, 
the ocean. There was a rough-haired pony out 
there also, and the three of us were crowded. The 
pony wanted sugar or something, and kept getting 
in the way. Poppy sketched, but her heart wasn’t 
in it and at every new halloo from some tourist ex- 
ploring King Arthur’s ruins (The Castle, of course) 
she looked up expectantly. 

At last I caught sight of Basil waving to me from 
the hotel, and I went back. I left Poppy there alone, 
pretending to sketch, although it was perfectly clear 
to every one that the only view she had was of the 
; pony’s mangy side. Shortly after, I saw Vivian, 
i in walking tweeds, going along one of the sheep’s 
paths toward her, and looking very handsome and 
determined. 

Basil and I sat on the terrace and ‘‘concentrated.” 
; It was my idea. 

“Will her to take him,” I said. 

“I am,” said Basil, looking at me. 

! “She’s so pretty,” said I. 


258 


AFFINITIES 


‘‘Lovely!’’ said Basil. 

“And it’s such a natural thing,’' I went on. “He 
has a lot of character, and he’s gentle as well as firm.” 

“I thank you,” said Basil, and bowed. 

“I don’t believe,” I said severely, “that you are 
concentrating.” 

The pony had got around behind the bench, and 
we lost them for a moment. But the little beast 
moved off just then, and it was like lifting a curtain. 
Poppy’s head was on Vivian’s shoulder. 

“Good old Viv !” said Basil. “Happy chap !” and 
sighed. 

I met Vivian as I went down to luncheon. He 
was coming up three stairs at a time, but he stopped 
and drew me into a corner. 

“All fixed,” he said. “You’re a trump, Madge. 
The T. C. did it. She’s promised all sorts of things.” 

“And you*?” I demanded. I thought he evaded 
my eye. 

“I^” he said. “Well, I’ve agreed not to inter- 
fere with her career. That’s only reasonable.” 

“And — Suffrage *?” 

“She’s going to be less militant,” he said. “Of 
course, her conviction is the same. I want her to 
stand by her principle. I wouldn’t respect her if 
she didn’t.” 

It didn’t quite satisfy me. I knew Poppy. But 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 259 

he was so happy that I said nothing. After all, 
what could I say? Viv after all had never opposed 
Suffrage, except in its militant form — although I 
don’t believe he had felt the necessity for it. But 
the trouble was that Poppy was a born militant, a 
bom aggressor. And he had promised her the 
strength of her convictions! 

(I wrote it all to father that afternoon and his 
cablegram came when I was back in London again 
and settled. 

“No great revolution ever accomplished without 
bloodshed.”) 


PART SECOND 


W HEN Poppy and Vivian had been married 
and gone to Brittany, I went back to 
Daphne’s. Daphne was very discouraging about 
them. I remember her standing by the fire and orat- 
ing, with her tea cup in her hand. 

"‘There’s a loss somewhere — Abound to be,” she 
said. Daphne is short and stout, and wears her 
hair short and curled over her head with an iron. 
“Either Suffrage loses her, or she loses a husband. 
I’ve watched it. It doesn’t do, Maggie,” which is 
her pet name for me. “A Suffragist as valuable as 
Poppy should not marry. You remember what Jane 
Willoughby’s husband said to her, that he expected 
The Cause for his wife to be himself, and that if 
she’d rather raise votes for women than a family of 
children she would have to choose at once. When 
she asked him why she couldn’t do both, he went to 
Africa!” 

“Without giving her an answer 
“Bless the child, there isn’t any answer! It isn’t 
wisdom that takes refuge in silence. It’s silly, be- 
sotted, dumbheaded idiocy.” 

“Viv isn’t an imbecile,” I said feebly. 

260 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 261 


“He’s a male,” she snapped, and ran her fingers 
up through her fringe, so that she appeared to stand 
in a gale of wind. 

The first blow fell about a week after. Poppy 
and Vivian came home from their wedding trip. 
They were settled in Viv’s house in Lancaster Gate, 
and one part of the wings was being turned into a 
studio for Poppy, with a glass roof. Vivian is the 
playwright, you know, and his study was to be be- 
neath her work shop, with a private staircase con- 
necting. She was most awfully happy. She'd 
brought home some stunning sketches, and her first 
work was going to be his study walls. 

Basil and I were asked to dinner. Poppy wanted 
to talk over her plans with us, and there was no one 
else. Poppy was radiant. We drank to the pony at 
Tintagel, and to the key at Guildford, and to the 
new play and the new paintings. The thing was a 
great success until half way through the dinner, when 
suddenly Poppy said: 

“By the way, Viv, the income tax man was here 
today.” 

I felt, for some reason, as I had felt when the key 
went down my back. 

Viv smiled, and went to his doom. 

“Just imagine, Basil,” he said. “The sweet young 
person across the table made more than I did last 
year ! Four thousand pounds !” 


262 


AFFINITIES 


‘Tm too commercially successful to think I have 
any real genius,” said Poppy, complacently. 

‘And some small sum the same sweet young per- 
son will have to pay over to the tax man,” Basil 
observed. 

Poppy raised her violet eyes. 

“I don’t intend to pay it,” she said. 

Vivian put down his glass. 

“That’s what Madge would call a ‘bluff,’ ” he 
said, with his eyes on her. “You’ll be obliged to 
pay it, dearest. You know that.” 

“ ‘Taxation without representation’ is what it 
amounts to.” Poppy’s face was dangerously . agree- 
able. “The American colonies seceded, didn’t they, 
for something like that*? I paid it last year, but I 
made up my mind then I’d never do it again.” 

Basil was looking very uncomfortable. 

“I gave you the privilege of your convictions,” 
said Viv, stiffly. “Of course, if that’s your intention, 
there is nothing more to be said.” 

Poppy looked puzzled. 

“But it is wrong, isn’t it*?” she demanded. “Surely 
that’s the a.b.c. of the reason for the discontent of 
Englishwomen.” 

“The principle may not be entirely equitable. Few 
laws work equally well for all.” Vivian now, a 
little white about the lips. “But, such as it is, it’s 
the law of your country.” 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 263 


“I didn’t choose my country, or make it’s laws,” 
Poppy said coldly. ‘‘I have a right to protest; I’ll 
not pay it.” 

Now, as I have said before, motives are seldom 
unmixed. I think what Poppy meant to do was 
simply to register a protest, refuse to pay, make a 
lot of fuss about it. If they sent her to jail, being 
the prominent person she was — she was the Honour- 
able Poppy, I think I forgot to say that before — it 
would make a lot of feeling. She did not mind jail 
very much. She’d been there twice. Then, having 
asserted her principles, she could get sick or go on 
a hunger strike, and Vivian would pay the tax and 
get her out. 

Basil laughed with assumed cheerfulness. 

“Then Viv is stuck for the tax,” he said. 

Vivian looked across the table and met Poppy’s 
eyes. 

“That’s hardly what you are getting at, is it?” 
he asked. “Your protest is against the imposition 
of the tax, isn’t it? It’s a matter of principle, isn’t 
it? My paying it wouldn’t help.” 

“I have not asked you to pay it.” 

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t the slightest inten- 
tion of paying it. Poppy. You put me in an absurd 
position, that’s all.” 

We had finished dinner, and the men went up to 


AFFINITIES 


264 

the drawing room with us. A funny thought struck 
Basil on the way up. He chuckled. 

“Of course, Viv,” he said, “if Poppy sticks to 
that, you'll have to do something. There's the Hus- 
band’s Liability Act. You’re liable, you know." 

Basil is a barrister. 

Well, we talked of other things and pretended 
not to notice Vivian’s strained eyes and Poppy’s 
high color. She took me off after a time to see the 
new studio, and it did not take me long to tell her 
what I thought. 

“It's absurd," I said. “Do you expect to break 
down iron bars by banging a head against them^" 

“It's my head," she said sulkily. 

“Not at all. It's Vivian’s. They will jail him." 

“I didn’t make the law." 

“Like the man with the Ten Commandments at 
Guildford !’’ I retorted. “He didn’t make them, but 
you know where he said he’d go if he broke them. 
By the way. Poppy, I’ve always meant to ask you, 
did you ever get a retort ready in case the T. C. 
came up again?" 

But the men came in just then, and I did not 
learn. It was rather a ghastly evening. We were 
all most polite and formal and Basil took me home. 
I told him about my house at home in the United 
States, and the way I’d been treated, and having 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 265 


nothing at the end of a year but plumber’s bills and 
tax receipts. 

“Pm glad you haven’t any particular income,” he 
said at last. “That’s one element of discord re- 
moved.” 

“I don’t understand.” 

“Yes, you do,” he said calmly. “You know ex- 
actly what I mean, and what I hope and what I feel. 
I don’t dare to say it, because if I start I’ll — Madge, 
I shall not propose to you until my Uncle Egbert 
dies. I don’t want you until I can support you 
comfortably — that’s a lie. I want you damnably, 
all the time.” 

I do not remember that we said anything more 
until we reached Daphne’s. Then, as he helped me 
out, I said: 

“How old is Uncle Egbert?” 

“Eighty-six,” he replied grimly, and went away 
without shaking hands. 

Well, to go back to Poppy, for of course it is her 
story I am telling, not mine. Mother came over 
soon after that and I went with her to Mentone for 
two months. Then she went back to America from 
Genoa, and I went back to London. Mother is the 
sweetest person in the world, and I adore her, but she 
represents the old-fashioned woman, and of course 
I stand for the advanced. For instance, she was 
much more interested in Basil Ward than in the 


AFFINITIES 


266 

Cause, and she absolutely disapproved of Poppy’s 
stand about the income tax. 

‘‘I don’t care to discuss the Cause,” she said to 
me. “We have trouble enough now with only the 
men voting. Why should we double our anxieties^” 

“That’s silly, mother,” I retorted. “Because one 
baby is a trouble and naughty sometimes, should one 
have only one child 

Basil met me at Charing Cross, and I knew there 
was something up by the very way his stick hung 
to his arm. 

“How’s everything I asked, when he had called 
a cab and settled me in it. “How nice and sooty it 
is, after the Riviera!” 

“Filthy hole !” said Basil grumpily. “Haven’t had 
a decent day since you left.” 

(This was remarkable, because the papers had all 
said the weather in London was wonderful for that 
time of year.) 

“And Poppy?” 

“Poppy’s a fool,” Basil broke out. “I’m glad 
you’re back, Madge. Maybe you can do something 
with her.” 

But he refused to tell me anything further. He 
asked if I would mind going directly to Lancaster 
Gate, and sat back in a corner eyeing me most of 
the way. 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 267 


“You make me nervous,” I said at last. “If you 
can’t look at me pleasantly, why look at all?” 

“I can’t help looking at you, and I’m blessed if I 
can look pleasant. Madge, just how much is your 
heart and soul in the — er — Cause?” 

Well, I was pretty tired of being questioned all 
the time. I said: 

“There isn’t any sacrifice I wouldn’t make for it.” 

“If you were married ” 

“I wouldn’t marry a man who didn’t think as I 
do.” 

He seemed to drop back further into his corner. 

The whole thing puzzled me. For Basil said noth- 
ing, but looked dejected and beaten^ somehow. And 
yet he had always believed that women should vote. 

We found Poppy in her studio, but Viv’s work- 
room below was empty and the door into the passage 
stood open. His desk was orderly and his pens in 
a row. It looked queer. Poppy was painting, stand- 
ing before a huge canvas and looking very smeary; 
she gave me a cheek to kiss, and she was thin ! Posi- 
tively thin ! 

“You’re looking very fit, Maggie,” she said, with- 
out a smile. “We’ve missed her, haven’t we, Basil?” 

Basil grunted something. Suddenly it occurred 
to me that he and Poppy hardly glanced at one an- 
other, and that he was still holding his hat and 
gloves. Their constraint, and Viv not around and 


268 


AFFINITIES 


everything — I was very uncomfortable. Of course, 
if Basil cared for Poppy and I used to think he did, 
and if Vivian had found it out — 

‘'No, thanks, Poppy,’’ said Basil, ‘Til — I’ll drop 
in again.” 

“Crumpets for tea !” said Poppy. They’d engaged 
the cook for her crumpets. 

“Thanks awfully,” Basil muttered and having 
said something about seeing me again very soon, he 
got out. I stared after him. Could this be Basil 
the arrogant^ Basil the abject? This brooding 
individual who did nothing but stare at me as if 
he were trying to work something out! 

Poppy came over to me, with her fists in the 
pockets of her painting apron, and looked down at 
me. 

“Frightened, like all the rest!” she said. “They 
say I’m responsible for hundreds of broken engage- 
ments! They made the law themselves, and now, 
when they see it in operation, they squeal.” 

It came over me then ; Poppy’s strained eyes, and 
her painting without a cigarette, and Basil looking 
so queer. 

“Then Viv ” 

“Viv is in jail, my dear,” she said. “Men made 
the law, of course, but I wish you’d hear them! 
The Husband’s Liability Act, child. A married 
woman’s husband is responsible for her debts. I re- 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 269 


fused to pay my income tax as taxation without rep- 
resentation. Viv got stubborn, and said he wouldn’t. 
Result, the entire male population screaming for 
help, engaged men breaking with Suffragist fiancees, 
the population prospects of the country poor, and — 
Viv in jail !” 

I could hardly speak for a minute. 

‘‘That — that’s what is wrong with Basil 

“Of course I’m sorry, Maggie. You see, you have 
an income of your own and at any moment, by re- 
fusing to pay the tax on it, you can send Basil to 
: jail.” 

“If he were any sort of a husband,” I said furi- 
ously, “he could pay the tax and save all the 
i trouble.” 

“Not at all. The men have banded together. 
They call it the Husband’s Defence ! They take 
turns at visiting Viv, and sending him books and 
; things. It’s — it’s maddening.” 

Poppy asked me to stay with her. She was really 
iin a bad way. She wasn’t eating or sleeping, and 
that very night a crowd of men gathered in front of 
the house, and hissed and called her things. One of 
ithem made a speech. We listened from behind the 
jcurtains. He said his wife was holding out her 
taxes on him and he expected to “go up” the next 
day. Poppy went out on the balcony and tried to 
tell them why she had done it, and that it was a 


270 


AFFINITIES 


matter of principle, and all that. But they would 
not listen, and only jeered. She came back into the 
drawing room quite beaten, and covered her face 
with her hands. 

It was the next evening that Basil told us that 
Vivian, feeling as he did that he represented the 
married men of the Kingdom and that he stood for 
principle also, had gone on a hunger strike! 

After all, it was Daphne, who came to the rescue. 
She came over to luncheon the day after and found 
Poppy in bed with cold cloths on her head, and her 
wedding ring off. Daphne sniffed. 

“You and Viv are two children,” she said. “You’re 
a silly for thinking you can beat the government at 
its own game, which is taxation, and Viv’s a fool 
for letting you be one.” 

Poppy is not placid of disposition, and she flung 
the cold cloths at Daphne and ordered her out. But 
Daphne only wrung out the cloths and hung them 
up, and raised the shades. 

“Y ou haven’t got a headache ; you have a pain in 
your disposition,” she said. “Put this on again.” 

And Poppy put on her wedding ring. 

“Now,” said Daphne. “You won’t pay this 
money as a matter of principle, and Viv won’t, for 
the same reason. I won’t because I haven’t got it: 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 271 


Madge probably ditto. But it must be paid. Have 
you got it in the house 

Poppy nodded. 

“In notes*?’’ 

“Yes.” 

“Where?” 

“In my jewel case.” 

“Very well. Now,” said Daphne, “Madge and I 
are going to fix this thing up. You are not to know 
anything about it. You can swear to that later on, 
if the question comes up. Is there any place in 
your studio where you keep money?” 

“In the table drawer.” 

“Very well. Tonight before you go to bed put 
that money there. Early tomorrow morning send a 
maid to the drawer. If, by any chance, it is not 
there, send for the police.” 

Poppy was sitting up in bed, her eyes narrowed. 

“The door of that wing is always locked. Viv 
has one key; I have the other.” 

“Never mind about the keys,” said Daphne, 
loftily. “Now lie back and take a nap. Madge 
and I are going to look at the new picture. And Pm 
taking Madge home to dinner. I want her to go 
with me to the Edgware Road meeting tonight.” 

We did not look at the picture very long. 
Daphne’s lips were shut tight, and I was feeling very 
queer. I knew what Daphne meant to do — to have 


272 


AFFINITIES 


the exact amount of Poppy’s tax stolen from the 
table, and reported to the police. And later on in 
the day to have it sent to the tax office in Poppy’s 
name. Poppy could swear she had not done it and 
point to the robbery. But by that time it would be 
credited to her name, and Viv would be free. 

“It’s a knot,” said Daphne, running her fingers 
through her hair. “It’s past un-tying. We have to 
cut it.” 

I know it sounds silly now and father has advised 
me never to tell mother, but it seemed the only thing 
at the time. Here were Viv and Poppy at an impasse^ 
as one may say, and things getting worse every day — 
Viv on a hunger strike, and Poppy’s work waiting, 
and the vote, which was our natural solution, as far 
off as ever. 

“I’ll unlock a window in Viv’s study,” said 
Daphne, “and you can come back after midnight 
and crawl in. I’d do it, but I’m too fat. Once in, 
you’ve only to go up the little staircase to the studio, 
and get the money. The key’s always in the side 
door. You can let yourself out.” 

“But I don’t like it. Daphne.” 

“A broken window,” said Daphne, “would look 
a lot better. More natural, you know. Here, hold 
a pillow.” 

She raised one of Viv’s windows a little — we were 
in his study — and she put her arm outside, with a 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 273 


paper weight in her hand. A smart tap, and a pane 
fell in on my pillow. We listened but no servants 
had come running and the house next door was closed 
and shuttered. 

Daphne is very clever. She unlocked the window,, 
drew the shade as it had been before, and put the 
glass in a little heap on the floor. The area was 
outside, about five feet below. 

‘‘I could never do it,’’ I protested. “I — I haven’t 
your courage, Daffie. Be a dear and do it yourself.” 

‘Have to be at Edgware Road,” said Daphne. 
“After all. Poppy’s your friend. You made the 
match, didn’t you?” 

“But if I’m arrested ” 

“You won’t be. Jane Willoughby is going with 
me tonight. Pll lend her some of your clothes and 
a veil. She can make a speech in your name. There’s 
an alibi for you !” 

Now it sounded all right at the time, but looking 
back, it seems queer. For of what use is an alibi 
if the police have you? But one thing I would not 
do. I would not climb in the window. Daphne 
finally put me behind one of Poppy’s canvases in 
the studio on a chair. 

“They’ll think you broke in, which answers as 
well,” she said. “And you can get the money and 
let yourself out the side door without any trouble.” 

“I sha’n’t have any dinner,” I reminded her. But 


274 


AFFINITIES 


4she said she’d have something ready for me at home 
after I’d committed my crime, and went down the 
staircase whistling. 

I shall never forget that awful night. I was most 
uncomfortable. There was a chance that the ser- 
vants, locking up, would go into Viv’s study and 
find the glass, although it was behind the curtain. 
But I’d seen Peters lock up before. He stood in a 
doorway and looked at each window, and if the cur- 
tains did not blow the house was safe. Luckily 
there was no wind that evening! 

But I hated the whole thing. It got darker and 
darker and things scrambled in the walls. Poppy 
brought the money and put it in a drawer but of 
course I did not speak to her. She had to be able 
to swear she knew nothing. She kissed Viv’s picture 
which she had painted, and trotted out again, sighing. 
Peters did not discover the broken window in the 
den below, because he never even went to look. And 
I felt very dreary, with no one really caring for me, 
and so far from America, and men — like Basil, for 
instance — acting so strange and uneasy. 

Of course I could have taken the money and gone, 
as soon as it was dark. But a jx)liceman took up a 
position outside the area door, and waited for some- 
body. He and Peters had a few words about Poppy’s 
maid, and the policeman said he would see her if he 
Lad to stay there all night. He stayed for hours. 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 275 


I got the money and put it in my handbag, and 
because I did not wish to get it mixed with m)^ own, 
I put it by itself in one of the pockets. Then I 
think I dozed for two or three hours, for when 
waking the street was quiet and the policeman had 
gone away. I was stiff, tired, and out of humor, 
and I started down the little staircase past Viv’s 
study to the area door. As I reached the bottom, 
somebody tried the lock outside. I nearly fainted. 
I turned and ran up in the dark, and the door below 
opened. A man came in stealthily and went directly 
to Vivian’s den. And just then a church clock struck 
two. 

I was frightened. It seemed to me that as soon as 
he ransacked the room below, he’d come up to the 
studio. Perhaps he knew about the money. Bur- 
glars seem to be able to smell money. And the 
idea of being caught in the studio, as in a cul de 
sac^ made me panicky. I clutched my bag, and 
slipped down the staircase, past Vivian’s door. The 
burglar was there, going through Viv’s desk, with 
a light turned on and a cap down over his eyes. 

I forgot to be cautious then. I bolted for the door, 
flung it open — it was a patent lock, with a knob 
inside — and stepped out into the night air and the 
policeman’s arms. 

‘Easy a bit, hold girl !” he said. “Hi’m ’ere and 
you’re ’ere. What’s the ’urry?” He held me off 


276 


AFFINITIES 


and looked at me. Luckily I’d never seen him be- 
fore. “Quick with your ’ands, ain’t you! In you 
goes and in five minutes out you pops!” 

“If you think I’m a burglar,” I said haughtily, 

“I’m nothing of the sort. I’m ’’ It came over 

me, all at once, that I’d better not say I was a friend 
of Poppy’s. You see she was being watched very 
closely. If I was searched, and the exact amount 
of her income tax in my pocket, it would look very 
queer, and the whole thing would be out, of course. 
“The burglar you followed is still in the house,” I 
said. “He’s in Mr. — in the study, just beyond 
that door.” 

“None of that, young woman,” he said, sternly. 
“You’ll just come along with me! ’Ouse-breaking 
it is; I watched you in and I watched you hout.” 

He took me by the arm, and I went along. There 
was nothing else to do. I tried to drop my hand 
bag as we went, but he heard it and picked it up. I 
was rather dazed. The only thing I could think of 
was that for the sake of the Cause and Poppy I must 
not tell who I was. But I begged him to send 
an officer to Poppy’s house, because there was a bur- 
glar in it, probably after the idea of Vivian’s new 
novel. 

At the police station they telephoned Poppy, and 
here she made her terrible mistake. She said after- 
wards that if Daphne had only explained she’d have 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 277 


known. But she thought it was all a part of the 
plot, and she went back to her studio and said she’d 
lost the money out of a table drawer. She told how 
it was, in notes and gold, and, of course, they found 
the exact amount in my bag. She says that when 
they told her they had it and a young woman too, 
she almost swooned. She tried to find Basil, but 
he was not in his rooms and Daphne had been ar« 
rested at Edgware Road and was incommunicado I 

Poppy’s position was pitiable. She didn’t know 
what to do. If she declared the plot and freed me^ 
all London would laugh, and the Cause would suffer. 
If she did not declare the plot, I would get a prison 
sentence. I have drawn a poor picture of Poppy if 
you think I stood a chance against The Cause. 

That is how things stood the next morning; 
Daphne, Vivian and I in jail, and Poppy in hys- 
terics. Then a curious thing happened. The even- 
ing papers announced that Vivian had paid the 
tax for Poppy and was free. Viv repudiated the 
payment — said he had not done it, and refused his 
liberty. 

‘‘Mr. Harcourt,” said one paper, “is quite thin 
and shows the strain of his confinement. He is ap- 
parently cheerful, but very feeble, supporting him- 
self by the back of a chair while he stood. His eyes 
flashed, however, as he stated that the Income Tax 
office could not legally accept the payment, as it 


278 


AFFINITIES 


was not his money. If any of his supporters had, 
in mistaken zeal, taken a collection for this pur- 
pose, he could only regret their action and refuse to 
profit by it.’’ 

At this time I had refused to talk and Poppy was 
in bed. 

But on the next day the Times published a letter, 
signed “Only a Man” which stirred the whole thing 
up again. The writer declared that the tax had 
been paid with Vivian’s own money, that the writer 
himself had stolen it out of a desk in Mr. Harcourt’s 
house, that it had been sent by messenger to the 
proper authorities, and a receipt issued, which was 
appended. And that, in other words, while Mr. 
Harcourt was to be lauded for his principles, his 
refusal to accept his liberty was now absurd. Also, 
the writer was under the impression that an innocent 
person was being held for his crime. 

This story being investigated by the authorities 
and Poppy’s recovering enough to come down and 
identify me, furiously indignant at my detention and 
outraged that I had not told my name and how I 
came to be leaving her house at that hour, which 
she said was because we had had a long talk about 
the next campaign, I was freed at last. It leaked 
out like this: 

(a) Viv was free with no loss of principle- 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 279 


(b) Poppy’s tax was paid, with no loss of prin* 
ciple. 

(c) “A Mere Man” was not apprehended. 

(d) Basil reappeared, after a heavy cold. 

I was not present wlien Viv and Poppy met, ow- 
ing to some formalities of my release. I drove to 
the house with Poppy’s money in my bag, and went 
up unannounced. Viv was not pale and wan. He 
looked rested and fit, and Poppy was on his knee. 
When I went in she moved to the arm of his chair, 
but no further, and she kept her profile toward him. 

They were very apologetic and said how sorry they 
were, and Poppy said she knew Daphne and I meant 
well, but that one wrong would never help another. 
I was speechless with rage, and I took from my bag 
her money and held it out to her. 

“Of course,” I said, “Vivian has no idea of who 
‘A Mere Man’ is^” 

“None whatever,” said Viv shamelessly. 

“That's curious,” I observed. “I saw him quite 
distinctly, you know, as I went down the stairs.” 

(I had — his back!) 

I went out, with my head up. They called to me, 
and I think Vivian started to follow. But I got 
into a taxicab and drove to Daphne’s. I was very 
depressed. 

Basil came to see me that night. Daphne was 
still in jail, and very comfortable. She sent me 


AFFINITIES 


280 

word not to worry, as she was getting new material 
for speeches, and had two ready. 

I refused to see Basil, but he followed the maid 
back, and stood looking down at me. 

“Viv says you saw me,’" he began without any 
preamble. 

“I did, but I didn’t recognise you. You’ve com- 
mitted yourself.” 

He changed colour. 

“What else was there to do^?” he demanded. 
^‘Those two geese would have gone on forever. Viv 
had the money in his desk, but it was my plan, 
not his.” 

As it happened, I had sent father a cablegram 
about Viv and Poppy just before I was arrested, 
and now I saw his reply on the mantel. 

“Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” he 
had cabled. Well, I had had the jail, and Basil had 
had — a cold ! Basil followed my eyes. 

“More cablegrams!” he said. Why doesn’t that 
chap come over and get you?” 

“Because I am going back to him. I can’t stand 
the pressure, Basil. Viv and Poppy are all right 
for this year, but how about next? Is it to be the 
same thing again?” 

“They’re going to Italy to live.” 

“A compromise?” I quoted, rather bitterly. “ ‘Not 


SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 281 


victory but a truce/ You and I made that marriage. 
It was the T. C. that did it/’ 

Basil took the cablegram from the mantel and 
deliberately read it. When he got to the signature 
he drew a long breath and then he grinned. 

“So that’s that!” he said. “Well, Maggie, are 
you going back to father, or — staying here with 
me?” 

“You’re afraid of me.” 

“I’ll take the risk, Madge. I didn’t tell yoi% 
Uncle Egbert died while you were away.” 

“I’ve been in jail for stealing,” I quavered. “And 
I’d do it again, Basil, for the Cause.” 

“Bless the Cause,” said Basil manfully. “Why 
shouldn’t you vote, if you want to? Aren’t you clev- 
erer, and lovelier, and more courageous than any 
man that ever lived? Anyhow, you’re right. Things 
are rotten. What sane government would lock a 
man up because his wife refuses to pay her taxes?” 

I lifted my head from his shoulder. 

“That wretched house at home ” I began. 

But he was quite cheerful. 

“We’ll sell it,” he said, “and you shall spend the 
money for pretties to wear, that don’t pay a tax.” 

It was compromise again. I knew it, but I yielded. 
After a time I said : 

“Basil, what was the retort you gave Poppy about 
the T. C.?” 


AFFINITIES 


282 

“Nothing much,” he replied complacently, “I told 
her, if any one sprung it at her again, to say that if 
men had made the Ten Commandments, they’d have 
added an eleventh amendment long ago, or else have 
annulled them.” 


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